THE SURPLUS LABOUR MISTAKE
Many non-Socialists believe that the cause of poverty is "surplus
labour," or over-population, and they tell us that if we could reduce
our population we should have no poor.
If this were true, we should find that in thinly populated countries the
workers fare better than in countries where the population is more
dense.
But we do not find anything of the kind.
The population of Ireland is thin. There are more people in London than
in all Ireland. Yet the working people of Ireland are worse off than the
working people of England.
The population of Scotland is thinner than that of England, but wages
rule higher in England.
In Australia there is a large country and a small population, but there
is plenty of poverty.
In the Middle Ages the entire population of England would only be a few
millions--say four or five millions--whereas it is now nearly thirty
millions. Yet the working classes are very much better off to-day than
they were in the eighth and ninth centuries.
Reduce the population of Britain to one million and the workers would be
in no better case than they are now. Increase the population to sixty
millions and the workers will be no worse off--at least so far as wages
are concerned.
I will give you the reason for this in a few words, using an
illustration which used to serve me for the same purpose in one of my
lectures.
No one will deny that all wealth--whether food, tools, clothing,
furniture, machines, arms, or houses--comes from _the land_.
For we feed our cattle and poultry on the land, and get from the land
corn, malt, hops, iron, timber, and every other thing we use, except
fish and a few sea-drugs; and we could not get fish without nets and
boats, nor make nets and boats without fibre and wood and metals.
Stand a decanter and a tumbler on a bare table. Call the table Britain,
call the decanter a landlord, and call the tumbler a labourer.
Now no man can produce wealth without land. If, then, Lord de Canter
owns all the land, and Tommy Tumbler owns none, how is Tommy Tumbler to
get his living?
He will have to work for Lord de Canter, and he will have to take the
wage his lordship offers him.
Now you cannot say that Britain is over-populated with only two men, nor
that it is suffering from a superfluity of labour when there is only one
labourer. And yet you observe that with only two men in the country one
is rich and the other poor.
How, then, will a reduction of the population prevent poverty?
Look at this diagram. A square board, with two men on it; one is black
and one is white.
[Illustration: Fig. 3.]
Call the board England, the black pawn a landlord, and the white pawn a
labourer.
Let me repeat that every useful thing comes out of the land, and then
ask this simple question: If _all_ the land--the whole of
England--belongs to the black man, how is the white man going to get his
living?
You see, although the population of England consists of only two men,
if one of these men owns _all_ the land, the other man must starve, or
steal, or beg, or work for wages.
Now, suppose our white man works for wages--works for the black
man--what is going to regulate the wages? Will the fact that there is
only one beggar make that beggar any richer? If there were ten white
men, and _all_ the land belonged to the black man, the ten whites would
be as well off as the one white was, for the landowner could find them
all work, and could get them to work for just as much as they could live
on.
No: that idea of raising wages by reducing the population is a mistake.
Do not the workers _make_ the wealth? They do. And is it not odd to say
that we will increase the wealth by reducing the number of the wealth
makers?
But perhaps you think the workers might get a bigger _share_ of the
wealth if there were fewer of them.
How? Our black man owns all England. He has 100 whites working for him
at wages just big enough to keep them alive. Of those 100 whites 50 die.
Will the black man raise the wages of the remaining 50? Why should he?
There is no reason why he should. But there is this reason why he should
not, viz. that as he has now only 50 men working for him, he will only
be half as rich as he was when he had 100 men working for him. But the
land is still his, and the whites are still in his power. He will still
pay them just as much as they can live on, and no more.
But you may say that if the workers decreased and the masters did not
decrease in numbers, wages must rise.
Suppose you have in the export cotton trade 100 masters and 100,000
workers. Half the workers die. You have now 100 masters and 50,000
workers.
Then you may say that, as foreign countries would still want the work of
100,000 workers, the 100 masters would compete as to which got the
biggest orders, and so wages would rise.
But bear in mind two things. First, if the foreign workers were as
numerous as before, the English masters could import hands; second, if
the foreign workers died out as fast as the English, there would only
be half as many foreigners needing shirts, and so the trade would keep
pace with the decrease in workers, and the wages would remain as they
were.
To improve the wages of the English workers the price of cotton goods
must rise or the profits of the masters must be cut down.
Neither of these things depends on the number of the population.
But now go back to our England with the three men in it. Here is the
black landlord, rich and idle; and the two white workers, poor and
industrious. One of the workers dies. The landlord gets less money, but
the remaining worker gets no more. _There are only two men in all
England, and one of them is poor._
But suppose we have one black landlord and 100 white workers, and the
workers adopt Socialism. Then every man of the 101 will have just what
he earns, and _all_ that he earns, and all will be free men.
Thus you see that under Socialism a big population will be better off
than the smallest population can be under non-Socialism.
But, the non-Socialist objects, wages are ruled by competition, and must
fall when the supply of labour exceeds the demand; and when that happens
it is because the country is over-populated.
I admit that the supply of labour often exceeds the demand, and that
when it does, wages may come down. But I deny that an excess of labour
over the demand for labour proves the country to be over-populated. What
it does prove is that the country is badly governed and
under-cultivated.
A country is over-populated when its soil cannot yield food for its
people. At present our population is about 40,000,000 and our soil would
support more than double the number.
The country, then, is not over-populated; it is badly governed.
There are, let us say, more shoemakers and tailors than there is
employment for. But are there no bare feet and ill-clothed backs?
Certainly. The bulk of our workers are not properly shod or clothed. It
is not, then, true to say that we have more tailors and shoemakers than
we require; but we ought to say instead that our tailors and shoemakers
cannot live by their trades because the rest of the workers are too poor
to pay them. Now, why are the rest of the workers too poor to buy boots
and clothing? Is it because there are too many of them? Let us take an
instance: the farm labourer. He cannot afford boots. Why? He is too
poor. Why? Not because there are too many farm labourers,--for there are
too few,--but because the wages of farm labourers are low. Why are they
low? Because agriculture is neglected, and because rents are high. So we
come back to my original statement, that the evil is due to the private
ownership of land.
The many are poor because the few are rich.
But, again, it may be asserted that we have always about half a million
of men unemployed, and that these men prove the existence of superfluous
labour.
Not at all. There are half a million of men out of work, but there are
many millions of acres idle. Abolish private ownership of land, and the
nation, being now owner of _all_ land, can at once find work for that
so-called "superfluous labour."
All wealth comes from the land. All wealth must be got from the land by
labour. Given a sufficient quantity of land, one man can produce from
the land more wealth than one man can consume. Therefore, as long as
there is a sufficiency of land there can be no such thing as
"superfluous labour," and no such thing as over-population. Given
machinery and combination, and probably one man can produce from the
land enough wealth for ten to consume. Why, then, should there be any
such thing as poverty?
One fundamental truth of economics is that every able-bodied and willing
worker is worth more than his keep.
There is such a thing as locked-out labour, but there is no such thing
in this country as useless labour. While we have land lying idle, and
while we have to import our food, how can we be so foolish as to call a
man who is excluded from the land superfluous? He is one of the factors
of wealth, and land is the other. Set the man on the land and he will
produce wealth. At present he is out of work and the land out of use.
But are either of them superfluous? No; we need both.