primary aims of social reform. There need be no fear that with shortened
hours of labor the sum total of production would fall short of human
needs. This, as has been shown from beginning to end of this essay, is
out of the question. Human _desires_ would eat up the result of ten
times the work we now accomplish. Human _needs_ would be satisfied with
a fraction of it. But the real difficulty in the shortening of hours
lies elsewhere. Here, as in the parallel case of the minimum wage, the
danger is that the attempt to alter things too rapidly may dislocate the
industrial machine. We ought to attempt such a shortening as will strain
the machine to a breaking point, but never break it. This can be done,
as with the minimum wage, partly by positive legislation and partly
collective action. Not much can be done at once. But the process can be
continuous. The short hours achieved with acclamation to-day will later
be denounced as the long hours of to-morrow. The essential point to
grasp, however, is that society at large has nothing to lose by the
process. The shortened hours become a part of the framework of
production. It adapts itself to it. Hitherto we have been caught in the
running of our own machine: it is time that we altered the gearing of
it.
The two cases selected,--the minimum wage and the legislative shortening
of hours,--have been chosen merely as illustrations and are not
exhaustive of the things that can be done in the field of possible and
practical reform. It is plain enough that in many other directions the
same principles may be applied. The rectification of the ownership of
land so as to eliminate the haphazard gains of the speculator and the
unearned increment of wealth created by the efforts of others, is an
obvious case in point. The "single taxer" sees in this a cure-all for
the ills of society. But his vision is distorted. The private ownership
of land is one of the greatest incentives to human effort that the
world has ever known. It would be folly to abolish it, even if we could.
But here as elsewhere we can seek to re-define and regulate the
conditions of ownership so as to bring them more into keeping with a
common sense view of social justice.
But the inordinate and fortuitous gains from land are really only one
example from a general class. The war discovered the "profiteer." The
law-makers of the world are busy now with smoking him out from his lair.
But he was there all the time. Inordinate and fortuitous gain, resting
on such things as monopoly, or trickery, or the mere hazards of
abundance and scarcity, complying with the letter of the law but
violating its spirit, are fit objects for appropriate taxation. The ways
and means are difficult, but the social principle involved is clear.
We may thus form some sort of vision of the social future into which we
are passing. The details are indistinct. But the outline at least in
which it is framed is clear enough. The safety of the future lies in a
progressive movement of social control alleviating the misery which it
cannot obliterate and based upon the broad general principle of equality
of opportunity. The chief immediate direction of social effort should be
towards the attempt to give to every human being in childhood adequate
food, clothing, education and an opportunity in life. This will prove to
be the beginning of many things.
THE END
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Transcriber's Note: Page 67, "are" changed to "and" (wages and all)