LUXURY AND THE GREAT USEFUL EMPLOYMENT FRAUD
There is one excuse which is still too often made for the extravagance
of the rich, and that is the excuse that "_The consumption of luxuries
by the rich finds useful employment for the poor_."
It is a ridiculous excuse, and there is no eminent economist in the
world who does not laugh at it; but the capitalist, the landlord, and
many pressmen still think it is good enough to mislead or silence the
people with.
As it is the _only_ excuse the rich have to offer for their wasteful
expenditure and costly idleness, it is worth while taking pains to
convince the workers that it is no excuse at all.
It is a mere error or falsehood, of course, but it is such an
old-established error, such a plausible lie, and is repeated so often
and so loudly by non-Socialists, that its disproof is essential. Indeed,
I regard it as a matter of great importance that this subject of luxury
and labour should be thoroughly understanded of the people.
Here is this rich man's excuse, or defence, as it was stated by the Duke
of Argyll about a dozen years ago. So slowly do the people learn, and so
ignorant or dishonest does the Press remain, that the foolish statement
is still quite up to date--
But there are at least some things to be seen which are in the
nature of facts and not at all in the nature of speculation or mere
opinion. Amongst these some become clear from the mere clearing up
of the meaning of words such as "the unemployed." Employment in this
sense is the hiring of manual labour for the supply of human wants.
_The more these wants are stimulated and multiplied the more
widespread will be the inducement to hire. Therefore all outcries
and prejudices against the progress of wealth and of what is called
"luxury" are nothing but outcries of prejudice against the very
sources and fountains of all employment._ This conclusion is
absolutely certain.
I have no doubt at all that the duke honestly believed that statement,
and I daresay there are hundreds of eminent persons still alive who are
no wiser than he.
The duke is quite correct in saying that "the more the wants of the rich
are stimulated" the more employment there will be for the people. But
after all, that only means that the more the rich waste, the harder the
poor must work.
The fact is, the duke has omitted the most essential factor from the
sum: he does not say how the rich man gets his money, nor from _whom_ he
gets his money. A ducal landlord draws, say, L100,000 a year in rent
from his estates.
Who pays the rent? The farmers. Who earns the rent? The farmers and the
labourers.
These men earn and pay the rent, and the ducal landlord takes it.
What does the duke do with the rent? He spends it. We are told that he
spends it in finding useful employment for the poor, and one intelligent
newspaper says--
A rich man cannot spend his money without finding employment for
vast numbers of people who, without him, would starve.
That implies that the poor live on the rich. Now, I maintain that the
rich live on the poor. Let us see.
The duke buys food, clothing, and lodging for himself, for his family,
and for his servants. He buys, let us say, a suit of clothes for
himself. That finds work for a tailor. And we are told that but for the
duke the tailor must starve. _Why?_
The agricultural labourer is badly in want of clothes; cannot _he_ find
the tailor work? No. The labourer wants clothes, but he has no money.
_Why_ has he no money? _Because the duke has taken his clothing money
for rent!_
Then in the first place it is because the duke has taken the labourer's
money that the tailor has no work. Then if the duke did not take the
labourer's money the labourer could buy clothes? Yes. Then if the duke
did not take the labourer's money the tailor _would_ have work? Yes.
Then it is not the duke's money, but the labourer's money, which keeps
the tailor from starving? Yes. Then in this case the duke is no use? He
is worse than useless. The labourer, who _earns_ the money, has no
clothes, and the idle duke has clothes.
So that what the duke really does is to take the earnings of the
labourer and spend them on clothes for _himself_.
Well, suppose I said to a farmer, "You give me five shillings a week out
of your earnings, and I will find employment for a man to make cigars,
_I_ will smoke the cigars."
What would the farmer say? Would he not say, "Why should I employ you to
smoke cigars which I pay for? If the cigar maker needs work, why should
I not employ him myself, and smoke the cigars myself, since I am to pay
for them?"
Would not the farmer speak sense? And would not the labourer speak sense
if he said to the duke, "Why should I employ you to wear out breeches
which I pay for?"
My offer to smoke the farmer's cigars is no more impudent than the
assertion of the Duke of Argyll, that he, the duke, finds employment for
a tailor by wearing out clothes for which the farmer has to pay.
If the farmer paid no rent, _he_ could employ the tailor, and he would
have the clothes. The duke does nothing more than deprive the farmer of
his clothes.
But this is not the whole case against the duke. The duke does not spend
_all_ the rent in finding work for the poor. He spends a good deal of it
on food and drink for himself and his dependants. This wealth is
consumed--it is _wasted_, for it is consumed by men who produce nothing.
And it all comes from the earnings of the men who pay the rent.
Therefore, if the farmer and his men, instead of giving the money to the
duke for rent, could spend it on themselves, they would find more
employment for the poor than the duke can, because they would be able to
spend all that the duke and his enormous retinue of servants waste.
Although the duke (with the labourer's money) does find work for some
tailors, milliners, builders, bootmakers, and others, yet he does not
find work for them all. There are always some tailors, bootmakers, and
builders out of work.
Now, I understand that in this country about L14,000,000 a year are
spent on horse-racing and hunting. This is spent by the rich. If it were
not spent on horse-racing and hunting, it could be spent on useful
things, and then, perhaps, there would be fewer tailors and other
working men out of work.
But you may say, "What then would become of the huntsmen, jockeys,
servants, and others who now live on hunting and on racing?" A very
natural question. Allow me to explain the difference between necessaries
and luxuries.
All the things made or used by man may be divided into two classes,
under the heads of necessaries and luxuries.
I should count as necessaries all those things which are essential to
the highest form of human life.
All those things which are not necessary to the highest form of human
life I should call luxuries, or superfluities.
For instance, I should call food, clothing, houses, fuel, books,
pictures, and musical instruments, necessaries; and I should call
diamond ear-rings, racehorses, and broughams luxuries.
Now it is evident that all those things, whether luxuries or
necessaries, are made by labour. Diamond rings, loaves of bread, grand
pianos, and flat irons do not grow on trees; they must be made by the
labour of the people. And it is very clear that the more luxuries a
people produce, the fewer necessaries they will produce.
If a community consists of 10,000 people, and if 9000 people are making
bread and 1000 are making jewellery, it is evident that there will be
more bread than jewellery.
If in the same community 9000 make jewellery and only 1000 make bread,
there will be more jewellery than bread.
In the first case there will be food enough for all, though jewels be
scarce. In the second case the people must starve, although they wear
diamond rings on all their fingers.
In a well-ordered State no luxuries would be produced until there were
enough necessaries for all.
Robinson Crusoe's first care was to secure food and shelter. Had he
neglected his goats and his raisins, and spent his time in making
shell-boxes, he would have starved. Under those circumstances he would
have been a fool. But what are we to call the delicate and refined
ladies who wear satin and pearls, while the people who earn them lack
bread?
Take a community of two men. They work upon a plot of land and grow
grain for food. By each working six hours a day they produce enough food
for both.
Now take one of those men away from the cultivation of the land, and set
him to work for six hours a day at the making of bead necklaces. What
happens?
This happens--that the man who is left upon the land must now work
twelve hours a day. Why? Because although his companion has ceased to
grow grain he has not ceased to _eat bread_. Therefore the man who grows
the grain must now grow grain enough for two. That is to say, that the
more men are set to the making of luxuries, the heavier will be the
burden of the men who produce necessaries.
But in this case, you see, the farmer does get some return for his extra
labour. That is to say, he gets half the necklaces in exchange for half
his grain; for there is no rich man.
Suppose next a community of three--one of whom is a landlord, while the
other two are farmers.
The landlord takes half the produce of the land in rent, but does no
work. What happens?
We saw just now that the two workers could produce enough grain in six
hours to feed two men for one day. Of this the landlord takes half.
Therefore, the two men must now produce four men's food in one day, of
which the landlord will take two, leaving the workers each one. Well, if
it takes a man six hours to produce a day's keep for one, it will take
him twelve hours to produce a day's keep for two. So that our two
farmers must now work twice as long as before.
But now the landlord has got twice as much grain as he can eat. He
therefore proceeds to _spend_ it, and in spending it he "finds useful
employment" for one of the farmers. That is to say, he takes one of the
farmers off the land and sets him to building a house for the landlord.
What is the effect of this?
The effect of it is that the one man left upon the land has now to find
food for all three, and in return gets nothing.
Consider this carefully. All men must eat, and here are two men who do
not produce food. To produce food for one man takes one man six hours.
To produce food for three men takes one man eighteen hours. The one man
left on the land has, therefore, to work three times as long, or three
times as hard, as he did at first. In the case of the two men, we saw
that the farmer did get his share of the bead necklaces, but in the case
of the three men the farmer gets nothing. The luxuries produced by the
man taken from the land are enjoyed by the rich man.
The landlord takes from the farmer two-thirds of his produce, and
employs another man to help him to spend it.
We have here three classes--
1. The landlord, who does no work.
2. The landlord's servant, who does work for the benefit of the
landlord.
3. The farmer, who produces food for himself and the other two.
Now, all the peoples of Europe, if not of the world, are divided into
those three classes.
And it is _most important_ that you should thoroughly understand those
three classes, never forget them, and never allow the rich man, nor the
champions of the rich man, to forget them.
The jockeys, huntsmen, and flunkeys alluded to just now, belong to the
class who work, but whose work is all done for the benefit of the idle.
Do not be deceived into supposing that there are but _two_ classes:
there are _three_. Do not believe that the people may be divided into
workers and idlers: they must be divided into (1) idlers, (2) workers
who work for the idlers, and (3) workers who support the idlers and
those who work for the idlers.
These three classes are a relic of the feudal times: they represent the
barons, the vassals, and the retainers.
The rich man is the baron, who draws his wealth from the workers; the
jockeys, milliners, flunkeys, upholsterers, designers, musicians, and
others who serve the rich man, and live upon his custom and employment,
are the retainers; the workers, who earn the money upon which the rich
man and his following exist, are the vassals.
Remember the _three_ classes: the rich, who produce nothing; the
employees of the rich, who produce luxuries for the rich; and the
workers, who find everything for themselves and all the wealth for the
other two classes.
It is like two men on one donkey. The duke rides the donkey, and boasts
that he carries the flunkey on his back. So he does. But the donkey
carries both flunkey and duke.
Clearly, then, the duke confers no favour on the agricultural labourer
by employing jockeys and servants, for the labourer has to pay for them,
and the duke gets the benefit of their services.
But the duke confers a benefit on the men he employs as huntsmen and
servants, and without the duke they would starve? No; without him they
would not starve, for the wealth which supports them would still exist,
and they could be found other work, and could even add to the general
store of wealth by producing some by their own labour.
The same remark applies to all those of the second class, from the
fashionable portrait-painter and the diamond-cutter down to the
scullery-maid and the stable-boy.
Compare the position of an author of to-day with the position of an
author in the time of Dr. Johnson. In Johnson's day the man of genius
was poor and despised, dependent on rich patrons: in our day the man of
genius writes for the public, and the rich patron is unknown.
The best patron is the People; the best employer is the People; the
proper person to enjoy luxuries is the man who works for and creates
them.
My Lady Dedlock finds useful employment for Mrs. Jones. She employs Mrs.
Jones to make her ladyship a ball-dress.
Where does my lady get her money? She gets it from her husband, Sir
Leicester Dedlock, who gets it from his tenant farmer, who gets it from
the agricultural labourer, Hodge.
Then her ladyship orders the ball-dress of Mrs. Jones, and pays her with
Hodge's money.
But if Mrs. Jones were not employed making the ball-dress for my Lady
Dedlock, she could be making gowns for Mrs. Hodge, or frocks for Hodge's
girls.
Whereas now Hodge cannot buy frocks for his children, and his wife is a
dowdy, because Sir Leicester Dedlock has taken Hodge's earnings and
given them to his lady to buy ball costumes.
Take a larger instance. There are many yachts which, in building and
decoration, have cost a quarter of a million.
Average the wages of all the men engaged in the erection and fitting of
such a vessel at 30s. a week. We shall find that the yacht has "found
employment" for 160 men for twenty years. Now, while those men were
engaged on that work they produced no necessaries for themselves. But
they _consumed_ necessaries, and those necessaries were produced by the
same people who found the money for the owner of the yacht to spend.
That is to say, that the builders were kept by the producers of
necessaries, and the producers of necessaries were paid for the
builders' keep, with money which they, the producers of necessaries, had
earned for the owner of the yacht.
The conclusion of this sum being that the producers of necessaries had
been compelled to support 160 men, and their wives and children, for
twenty years; and for what?
That they might build _one yacht_ for the pleasure of _one idle man_.
Would those yacht builders have starved without the rich man? Not at
all. But for the rich man, the other workers would have had more money,
could afford more holidays, and that quarter of a million spent on the
one yacht would have built a whole fleet of pleasure boats.
And note also that the pleasure boats would find more employment than
the yacht, for there would be more to spend on labour and less on costly
materials.
So with other dependants of the rich. The duke's gardeners could find
work in public parks for the people; the artists, who now sell their
pictures to private collections, could sell them to public galleries;
and some of the decorators and upholsterers who now work on the rich
men's palaces might turn their talents to our town halls and hospitals
and public pavilions. And that reminds me of a quotation from Mr.
Mallock, cited in _Merrie England_. Mr. Mallock said--
Let us take, for instance, a large and beautiful cabinet, for which
a rich man of taste pays L2000. The cabinet is of value to him for
reasons which we will consider presently; as possessed by him it
constitutes a portion of his wealth. But how could such a piece of
wealth be distributed? Not only is it incapable of physical
partition and distribution, but, if taken from the rich man and
given to the poor man, the latter is not the least enriched by it.
Put a priceless buhl cabinet into an Irish labourer's cottage, and
it will probably only add to his discomforts; or, if he finds it
useful, it will only be because he keeps his pigs in it. A picture
by Titian, again, may be worth thousands, but it is worth thousands
only to the man who can enjoy it.
Now, isn't that a precious piece of nonsense? There are two things to be
said about that rich man's cabinet. The first is, that it was made by
some workman who, if he had not been so employed, might have been
producing what _would_ be useful to the poor. So that the cabinet has
cost the poor something. The second is, that a priceless buhl cabinet
_can_ be divided. Of course, it would be folly to hack it into shavings
and serve them out amongst the mob; but if that cabinet is a thing of
beauty and worth the seeing, it ought to be taken from the rich
benefactor, whose benefaction consists in his having plundered it from
the poor, and it ought to be put into a public museum where thousands
could see it, and where the rich man could see it also if he chose.
This, indeed, is the proper way to deal with all works of art, and this
is one of the rich man's greatest crimes--that he keeps hoarded up in
his house a number of things that ought to be the common heritage of the
people.
Every article of luxury has to be paid for not in _money_, but in
_labour_. Every glass of wine drunk by my lord, and every diamond star
worn by my lady, has to be paid for with the sweat and the tears of the
poorest of our people. I believe it is a literal fact that many of the
artificial flowers worn at Court are actually stained with the tears of
the famished and exhausted girls who make them.
To say that the extravagance of the rich finds useful employment for the
poor, is more foolish than to say that the drunkard finds useful
employment for the brewers.
The drunkard may have a better defence than the duke, because he may
perhaps have produced, or earned, the money he spends in beer, whereas
the duke's rents are not produced by the duke nor earned by him.
That is clear, is it not? And yet a few weeks since I saw an article in
a London weekly paper in which we were told that the thief was an
indispensable member of society, because he found employment for
policemen, gaolers, builders of gaols, and other persons.
The excuse for the thief is as valid as the excuse for the duke. The
thief finds plenty of employment for the people. But who _pays_ the
persons employed?
The police, the gaolers, and all the other persons employed in catching,
holding, and feeding the thief, are paid out of the rates and taxes. Who
pays the taxes? The British public. Then the British public have to
support not only the police and the rest, but the thief as well.
What do the police, the thief, and the gaoler produce? Do they produce
any wealth? No. They consume wealth, and the thief is so useful that if
he died out for ever, it would pay us better to feed the gaolers and
police for doing nothing than to fetch the thief back again to feed him
as well.
Work is useless unless it be productive work. It would be work for a man
to dig a hole and then fill it up again; but the work would be of no
benefit to the nation. It would be work for a man to grow strawberries
to feed the Duke of Argyll's donkey on, but it would be useless work,
because it would add nothing to the general store of wealth.
Policemen and gaolers are men withdrawn from the work of producing
wealth to wait upon useless criminals. They, like soldiers and many
others, do not produce wealth, but they consume it, and the greater the
number of producers and the smaller the number of consumers the richer
the State must be. For which family would be the better off--the family
wherein ten earned wages and none wasted them, or the family in which
two earned wages and eight spent them?
Do not imagine, as some do, that increased consumption is a blessing. It
is the amount of wealth you produce that makes a nation prosperous; and
the idle rich man, who produces nothing, only makes his crime worse by
spending a great deal.
The great mass of the workers lead mean, penurious, and joyless lives;
they crowd into small and inconvenient houses; they occupy the darkest,
narrowest, and dirtiest streets; they eat coarse and cheap food, when
they do not go hungry; they drink adulterated beer and spirits; they
wear shabby and ill-made clothes; they ride in third-class carriages,
sit in the worst seats of the churches and theatres; and they stint
their wives of rest, their children of education, and themselves of
comfort and of honour, that they may pay rent, and interest, and profits
for the idle rich to spend in luxury and folly.
And if the workers complain, or display any signs of suspicion or
discontent, they are told that the rich are keeping them.
That is not _true_. It is the workers who are keeping the rich.