WHY BE POOR?
Poverty springs from a number of sources, the more important of which
are controllable. So does special privilege. I think it is entirely
feasible to abolish both poverty and special privilege--and there can be
no question but that their abolition is desirable. Both are unnatural,
but it is work, not law, to which we must look for results.
By poverty I mean the lack of reasonably sufficient food, housing, and
clothing for an individual or a family. There will have to be
differences in the grades of sustenance. Men are not equal in mentality
or in physique. Any plan which starts with the assumption that men are
or ought to be equal is unnatural and therefore unworkable. There can be
no feasible or desirable process of leveling down. Such a course only
promotes poverty by making it universal instead of exceptional. Forcing
the efficient producer to become inefficient does not make the
inefficient producer more efficient. Poverty can be done away with only
by plenty, and we have now gone far enough along in the science of
production to be able to see, as a natural development, the day when
production and distribution will be so scientific that all may have
according to ability and industry.
The extreme Socialists went wide of the mark in their reasoning that
industry would inevitably crush the worker. Modern industry is gradually
lifting the worker and the world. We only need to know more about
planning and methods. The best results can and will be brought about by
individual initiative and ingenuity--by intelligent individual
leadership. The government, because it is essentially negative, cannot
give positive aid to any really constructive programme. It can give
negative aid--by removing obstructions to progress and by ceasing to be
a burden upon the community.
The underlying causes of poverty, as I can see them, are essentially due
to the bad adjustment between production and distribution, in both
industry and agriculture--between the source of power and its
application. The wastes due to lack of adjustment are stupendous. All of
these wastes must fall before intelligent leadership consecrated to
service. So long as leadership thinks more of money than it does of
service, the wastes will continue. Waste is prevented by far-sighted not
by short-sighted men. Short-sighted men think first of money. They
cannot see waste. They think of service as altruistic instead of as the
most practical thing in the world. They cannot get far enough away from
the little things to see the big things--to see the biggest thing of
all, which is that opportunist production from a purely money standpoint
is the least profitable.
Service can be based upon altruism, but that sort of service is not
usually the best. The sentimental trips up the practical.
It is not that the industrial enterprises are unable fairly to
distribute a share of the wealth which they create. It is simply that
the waste is so great that there is not a sufficient share for everyone
engaged, notwithstanding the fact that the product is usually sold at so
high a price as to restrict its fullest consumption.
Take some of the wastes. Take the wastes of power. The Mississippi
Valley is without coal. Through its centre pour many millions of
potential horsepower--the Mississippi River. But if the people by its
banks want power or heat they buy coal that has been hauled hundreds of
miles and consequently has to be sold at far above its worth as heat or
power. Or if they cannot afford to buy this expensive coal, they go out
and cut down trees, thereby depriving themselves of one of the great
conservers of water power. Until recently they never thought of the
power at hand which, at next to nothing beyond the initial cost, could
heat, light, cook, and work for the huge population which that valley is
destined to support.
The cure of poverty is not in personal economy but in better production.
The "thrift" and "economy" ideas have been overworked. The word
"economy" represents a fear. The great and tragic fact of waste is
impressed on a mind by some circumstance, usually of a most
materialistic kind. There comes a violent reaction against
extravagance--the mind catches hold of the idea of "economy." But it
only flies from a greater to a lesser evil; it does not make the full
journey from error to truth.
Economy is the rule of half-alive minds. There can be no doubt that it
is better than waste; neither can there be any doubt that it is not as
good as use. People who pride themselves on their economy take it as a
virtue. But what is more pitiable than a poor, pinched mind spending the
rich days and years clutching a few bits of metal? What can be fine
about paring the necessities of life to the very quick? We all know
"economical people" who seem to be niggardly even about the amount of
air they breathe and the amount of appreciation they will allow
themselves to give to anything. They shrivel--body and soul. Economy is
waste: it is waste of the juices of life, the sap of living. For there
are two kinds of waste--that of the prodigal who throws his substance
away in riotous living, and that of the sluggard who allows his
substance to rot from non-use. The rigid economizer is in danger of
being classed with the sluggard. Extravagance is usually a reaction from
suppression of expenditure. Economy is likely to be a reaction from
extravagance.
Everything was given us to use. There is no evil from which we suffer
that did not come about through misuse. The worst sin we can commit
against the things of our common life is to misuse them. "Misuse" is the
wider term. We like to say "waste," but waste is only one phase of
misuse. All waste is misuse; all misuse is waste.
It is possible even to overemphasize the saving habit. It is proper and
desirable that everyone have a margin; it is really wasteful not to have
one--if you can have one. But it can be overdone. We teach children to
save their money. As an attempt to counteract thoughtless and selfish
expenditure, that has a value. But it is not positive; it does not lead
the child out into the safe and useful avenues of self-expression or
self-expenditure. To teach a child to invest and use is better than to
teach him to save. Most men who are laboriously saving a few dollars
would do better to invest those few dollars--first in themselves, and
then in some useful work. Eventually they would have more to save. Young
men ought to invest rather than save. They ought to invest in themselves
to increase creative value; after they have taken themselves to the peak
of usefulness, then will be time enough to think of laying aside, as a
fixed policy, a certain substantial share of income. You are not
"saving" when you prevent yourself from becoming more productive. You
are really taking away from your ultimate capital; you are reducing the
value of one of nature's investments. The principle of use is the true
guide. Use is positive, active, life-giving. Use is alive. Use adds to
the sum of good.
Personal want may be avoided without changing the general condition.
Wage increases, price increases, profit increases, other kinds of
increases designed to bring more money here or money there, are only
attempts of this or that class to get out of the fire--regardless of
what may happen to everyone else. There is a foolish belief that if only
the money can be gotten, somehow the storm can be weathered. Labour
believes that if it can get more wages, it can weather the storm.
Capital thinks that if it can get more profits, it can weather the
storm. There is a pathetic faith in what money can do. Money is very
useful in normal times, but money has no more value than the people put
into it by production, and it can be so misused. It can be so
superstitiously worshipped as a substitute for real wealth as to destroy
its value altogether.
The idea persists that there exists an essential conflict between
industry and the farm. There is no such conflict. It is nonsense to say
that because the cities are overcrowded everybody ought to go back to
the farm. If everybody did so farming would soon decline as a
satisfactory occupation. It is not more sensible for everyone to flock
to the manufacturing towns. If the farms be deserted, of what use are
manufacturers? A reciprocity can exist between farming and
manufacturing. The manufacturer can give the farmer what he needs to be
a good farmer, and the farmer and other producers of raw materials can
give the manufacturer what he needs to be a good manufacturer. Then with
transportation as a messenger, we shall have a stable and a sound system
built on service. If we live in smaller communities where the tension of
living is not so high, and where the products of the fields and gardens
can be had without the interference of so many profiteers, there will be
little poverty or unrest.
Look at this whole matter of seasonal work. Take building as an example
of a seasonal trade. What a waste of power it is to allow builders to
hibernate through the winter, waiting for the building season to come
around!
And what an equal waste of skill it is to force experienced artisans who
have gone into factories to escape the loss of the winter season to stay
in the factory jobs through the building season because they are afraid
they may not get their factory places back in the winter. What a waste
this all-year system has been! If the farmer could get away from the
shop to till his farm in the planting, growing, and harvesting seasons
(they are only a small part of the year, after all), and if the builder
could get away from the shop to ply his useful trade in its season, how
much better they would be, and how much more smoothly the world would
proceed.
Suppose we all moved outdoors every spring and summer and lived the
wholesome life of the outdoors for three or four months! We could not
have "slack times."
The farm has its dull season. That is the time for the farmer to come
into the factory and help produce the things he needs to till the farm.
The factory also has its dull season. That is the time for the workmen
to go out to the land to help produce food. Thus we might take the slack
out of work and restore the balance between the artificial and the
natural.
But not the least benefit would be the more balanced view of life we
should thus obtain. The mixing of the arts is not only beneficial in a
material way, but it makes for breadth of mind and fairness of judgment.
A great deal of our unrest to-day is the result of narrow, prejudiced
judgment. If our work were more diversified, if we saw more sides of
life, if we saw how necessary was one factor to another, we should be
more balanced. Every man is better for a period of work under the open
sky.
It is not at all impossible. What is desirable and right is never
impossible. It would only mean a little teamwork--a little less
attention to greedy ambition and a little more attention to life.
Those who are rich find it desirable to go away for three or four months
a year and dawdle in idleness around some fancy winter or summer resort.
The rank and file of the American people would not waste their time that
way even if they could. But they would provide the team-work necessary
for an outdoor, seasonal employment.
It is hardly possible to doubt that much of the unrest we see about us
is the result of unnatural modes of life. Men who do the same thing
continuously the year around and are shut away from the health of the
sun and the spaciousness of the great out of doors are hardly to be
blamed if they see matters in a distorted light. And that applies
equally to the capitalist and the worker.
What is there in life that should hamper normal and wholesome modes of
living? And what is there in industry incompatible with all the arts
receiving in their turn the attention of those qualified to serve in
them? It may be objected that if the forces of industry were withdrawn
from the shops every summer it would impede production. But we must look
at the matter from a universal point of view. We must consider the
increased energy of the industrial forces after three or four months in
outdoor work. We must also consider the effect on the cost of living
which would result from a general return to the fields.
We have, as I indicated in a previous chapter, been working toward this
combination of farm and factory and with entirely satisfactory results.
At Northville, not far from Detroit, we have a little factory making
valves. It is a little factory, but it makes a great many valves. Both
the management and the mechanism of the plant are comparatively simple
because it makes but one thing. We do not have to search for skilled
employees. The skill is in the machine. The people of the countryside
can work in the plant part of the time and on the farm part of the time,
for mechanical farming is not very laborious. The plant power is derived
from water.
Another plant on a somewhat larger scale is in building at Flat Rock,
about fifteen miles from Detroit. We have dammed the river. The dam also
serves as a bridge for the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Railway, which was
in need of a new bridge at that point, and a road for the public--all in
one construction. We are going to make our glass at this point. The
damming of the river gives sufficient water for the floating to us of
most of our raw material. It also gives us our power through a
hydroelectric plant. And, being well out in the midst of the farming
country, there can be no possibility of crowding or any of the ills
incident to too great a concentration of population. The men will have
plots of ground or farms as well as their jobs in the factory, and these
can be scattered over fifteen or twenty miles surrounding--for of course
nowadays the workingman can come to the shop in an automobile. There we
shall have the combination of agriculture and industrialism and the
entire absence of all the evils of concentration.
The belief that an industrial country has to concentrate its industries
is not, in my opinion, well-founded. That is only a stage in industrial
development. As we learn more about manufacturing and learn to make
articles with interchangeable parts, then those parts can be made under
the best possible conditions. And these best possible conditions, as far
as the employees are concerned, are also the best possible conditions
from the manufacturing standpoint. One could not put a great plant on a
little stream. One can put a small plant on a little stream, and the
combination of little plants, each making a single part, will make the
whole cheaper than a vast factory would. There are exceptions, as where
casting has to be done. In such case, as at River Rouge, we want to
combine the making of the metal and the casting of it and also we want
to use all of the waste power. This requires a large investment and a
considerable force of men in one place. But such combinations are the
exception rather than the rule, and there would not be enough of them
seriously to interfere with the process of breaking down the
concentration of industry.
Industry will decentralize. There is no city that would be rebuilt as it
is, were it destroyed--which fact is in itself a confession of our real
estimate of our cities. The city had a place to fill, a work to do.
Doubtless the country places would not have approximated their
livableness had it not been for the cities. By crowding together, men
have learned some secrets. They would never have learned them alone in
the country. Sanitation, lighting, social organization--all these are
products of men's experience in the city. But also every social ailment
from which we to-day suffer originated and centres in the big cities.
You will find the smaller communities living along in unison with the
seasons, having neither extreme poverty nor wealth--none of the violent
plagues of upheave and unrest which afflict our great populations. There
is something about a city of a million people which is untamed and
threatening. Thirty miles away, happy and contented villages read of the
ravings of the city! A great city is really a helpless mass. Everything
it uses is carried to it. Stop transport and the city stops. It lives
off the shelves of stores. The shelves produce nothing. The city cannot
feed, clothe, warm, or house itself. City conditions of work and living
are so artificial that instincts sometimes rebel against their
unnaturalness.
And finally, the overhead expense of living or doing business in the
great cities is becoming so large as to be unbearable. It places so
great a tax upon life that there is no surplus over to live on. The
politicians have found it easy to borrow money and they have borrowed to
the limit. Within the last decade the expense of running every city in
the country has tremendously increased. A good part of that expense is
for interest upon money borrowed; the money has gone either into
non-productive brick, stone, and mortar, or into necessities of city
life, such as water supplies and sewage systems at far above a
reasonable cost. The cost of maintaining these works, the cost of
keeping in order great masses of people and traffic is greater than the
advantages derived from community life. The modern city has been
prodigal, it is to-day bankrupt, and to-morrow it will cease to be.
The provision of a great amount of cheap and convenient power--not all
at once, but as it may be used--will do more than anything else to bring
about the balancing of life and the cutting of the waste which breeds
poverty. There is no single source of power. It may be that generating
electricity by a steam plant at the mine mouth will be the most
economical method for one community. Hydro-electric power may be best
for another community. But certainly in every community there ought to
be a central station to furnish cheap power--it ought to be held as
essential as a railway or a water supply. And we could have every great
source of power harnessed and working for the common good were it not
that the expense of obtaining capital stands in the way. I think that we
shall have to revise some of our notions about capital.
Capital that a business makes for itself, that is employed to expand the
workman's opportunity and increase his comfort and prosperity, and that
is used to give more and more men work, at the same time reducing the
cost of service to the public--that sort of capital, even though it be
under single control, is not a menace to humanity. It is a working
surplus held in trust and daily use for the benefit of all. The holder
of such capital can scarcely regard it as a personal reward. No man can
view such a surplus as his own, for he did not create it alone. It is
the joint product of his whole organization. The owner's idea may have
released all the energy and direction, but certainly it did not supply
all the energy and direction. Every workman was a partner in the
creation. No business can possibly be considered only with reference to
to-day and to the individuals engaged in it. It must have the means to
carry on. The best wages ought to be paid. A proper living ought to be
assured every participant in the business--no matter what his part. But,
for the sake of that business's ability to support those who work in it,
a surplus has to be held somewhere. The truly honest manufacturer holds
his surplus profits in that trust. Ultimately it does not matter where
this surplus be held nor who controls it; it is its use that matters.
Capital that is not constantly creating more and better jobs is more
useless than sand. Capital that is not constantly making conditions of
daily labour better and the reward of daily labour more just, is not
fulfilling its highest function. The highest use of capital is not to
make more money, but to make money do more service for the betterment of
life. Unless we in our industries are helping to solve the social
problem, we are not doing our principal work. We are not fully serving.