REVOLUTION OR EVOLUTION?
Those persons who are unaccustomed to consider the great effects
which flow from a continuous action of small causes, are too liable
to suppose that a large result can only be obtained by a violent and
immediate action. They suppose that only some mighty impulse can change
the face of affairs; they pray that the mountains be rent, and look to
the earthquake and the tempest, not thinking that it is the still small
voice that really directs. They forget that it is the humble earthworms
that plough the land, and the invisible bacteria that destroy nations
and alter the face of politics.
Ignoring the far-reaching after-effects of action, men are led to
over-do all the changes which they attempt to carry out by direct and
immediate means. This is like a child who asks to have its hand cut off
because its finger aches.
The bad effect of sudden and violent changes may best be observed
in our own history. The great changes of the Civil War left England
without any checks on the violence of parties. The King and Lords had
been abolished, and the Commons ruled alone. The fierce factions of the
Presbyterians and Independents would have wrecked the country, had not
a ruler come forward far more arbitrary than the one already rejected.
Charles had looked over the wall when he tried to arrest five members,
but Cromwell stole the horse outright when he dismissed the parliament
by armed force. Pride's Purge was a greater violation of popular
liberties than anything done by Tudor or Stuart; and the effect of half
a generation of such violence was that the nation was heartily glad to
get back a worse king than the one they had beheaded. Cromwell's great
service was, that he saved England from a fanatical and factious House
of Commons, by exercising monarchical prerogatives which Charles never
dared to assert. The needs of the time drove him, as a capable man,
to act for the highest good outside the law. When we hear a faction
lauding Cromwell now, it may be overlooked that he made short work of
Fifth Monarchy men and other extremists; and that the great struggle
of mind to him was the dire necessity of crushing the factions, and of
using that compulsion which he clearly saw was the only alternative to
anarchy. The bitter persecuting spirit of the factions was far more
violent than any course of action which preceded or followed their
rule. Neither Charles I nor Charles II touched the private religious
actions of the people; but the factions proscribed even the private use
of the Book of Common Prayer. The subsequent Five-mile Act regulating
public meetings for worship was mild compared with the domiciliary
visitations in search of the Prayer Book in 1645. But for the visits
of the parliamentary soldiery, breaking into chapels and putting their
swords to the breasts of the kneeling communicants, there would never
have been the milder dispersions of the Restoration. But for the
bitter persecution of the so-called Malignants, and the deprivation of
the clergy throughout the country by the parliament, there would never
have been the milder reversion of Bartholomew's Day, 1662. In every
point the violent changes of constitution wrought more tyranny and more
personal hardship than was even caused by the revulsion which followed.
In France the same effect was seen. The Revolution probably caused more
bloodshed and more personal misery in ten years, than the old _régime_
had done in a century. England has paid twenty-five millions a year for
a century past as interest on the debt incurred for crushing Napoleon.
Another result should be noted with care. A great popular ferment with
a diminution of constitutional control, must result in establishing
a military despotism as the lesser evil for the country. Caesar,
Aurelian, Cromwell, Napoleon, all arose from the popular party, as the
necessary substitutes, by arbitrary action, for the constitutionalism
which had been abolished. In the place of the legally regulated
courses, more or less unsuitable and corrupted, it proved absolutely
necessary when they were abolished to have some other supreme authority
with power to enforce obedience.
We are not concerned at this point to consider the relative right or
wrong of the various parties just mentioned; that has nothing to do
with the matter. The lesson is that a violent and rapid change of
constitution leads to worse evils than those which it is sought to
remedy. Every existing order of things, however imperfect or bad, must
have a certain balance of parts or it could not continue. And when
that balance is destroyed the results can seldom be foreseen. It is
exactly the same in nature; when any species of animal is exterminated
suddenly—as by firearms—the far-reaching consequences of its
disappearance cannot be anticipated; other species will increase or
disappear, and even vegetable life will be modified.
The phrase therefore of a "radical reform," or briefly "radicalism," is
in defiance of natural science and of historical experience; it denies
the principle of gradual evolution in the development of institutions
and of character. A small amount of experience of different types is
enough to show its fallacy, for radicals say that "travelling abroad
always spoils a good radical."
In order to avoid violent change it is needful to allow free scope
for gradual change. The greatest catastrophes may be caused by the
accumulation of small forces; when a tiny stream becomes dammed by a
landslip it may form a lake, which in bursting will devastate a whole
valley. So when the gradual movement of a people is checked, and an
artificial condition is enforced by laws, the breaking down of such
restrictions will cause wholesale disaster. Had the Romans allowed
free immigration of Gothic settlers there would never have been the
Gothic conquest of Italy. Were the Californians and Australians to
allow a free immigration of Japanese, under fair and equal laws, they
would not have to fear a squadron demanding justice in their ports.
The necessity of violent changes is therefore always the fault of
those who prevent gradual changes to fit new conditions. If the House
of Commons tries again the experiment of the Long Parliament, and by
force or subterfuge abrogates the second chamber, it will be largely
due to the House of Lords refusing changes in its mode of action. An
Upper House which elected a legislative committee, like the election of
Scotch and Irish Peers, would be in a far stronger position. The House
of Commons at present is too much like an elephant picking up pins; and
if the public become so much disgusted with its incapacity for business
that at some crisis they throw the reins of power to an able man like
Kitchener, it will be largely due to the fossilisation of the Rules of
Procedure. A Lower House which allotted its time strictly according to
the value of its votes of supply, or of the interests involved—which
registered its decisions instantly, as by the electric signals which
are now found in every hotel, and which employed diagrams in debate
by means of the lantern and screen which are now found in every
school—would stand a better chance of coping with its business in a
creditable manner. The fault of violent change, and all its damaging
consequences, rests in the first place on those who resist gradual
change.
It is therefore needful to leave the way open for gradual changes. In
every new law, the changes of circumstance which are likely to arise
should be anticipated, by leaving the way open for them to begin to
act gently and gradually. The principle of fixed fines (based on
income tax), regardless of any reflection on character, for various
infractions of a civil law (or even of some criminal laws) should be
always open, so that, as necessities arise, the prevalence of such
fines would call attention to the need of some change. An excellent
system has been found in allowing a department a large latitude in
interpreting a law, or a dispensing power in administering it; and this
system might well be extended so far as it was not seriously abused by
favouritism. Another mode of change is to permit a variety of types in
different places, as in local administration, and then allow a large
latitude for the adoption of any type found to work well in another
place. This is partly reached by varying bye-laws; but this might well
be extended higher in the scale, and with local liberty to adopt any
bye-law already sanctioned elsewhere. The ways would thus be open for
gradual movements, which could extend until they produced such pressure
on the larger and more organic laws as to cause a serious legislative
step.
We will now turn to observe the far-reaching actual and probable
effects of various laws, which at first might seem quite inadequate
to cause such changes. Some years have passed since the graduation of
death-duties, and we can begin to see the effects. The simple action
of a tax, without any compulsion, has produced a profound change in a
family system which centuries or thousands of years had left unaltered.
The notorious clinging to power and money among the aged, has given
way before the screw of the State. The custom which left the control
of large estates to men generally between fifty and eighty years of
age, and hampered their development by the dying hand, has largely
yielded to the Indian custom, of the division of property among sons
on their marriage or entry on public life. It is becoming habitual for
a father to establish his sons with the family property, and only
to retain such a portion of the estate as he may wish to fill his
declining activities. This is a very beneficial change, though by no
means a grateful one to the Exchequer which has brought it about. In
lesser properties the same action occurs; a father will buy an annuity
for himself, and distribute the remaining capital, each son being at
liberty either to place his portion at compound interest, so as to
replace at the probable date of his father's death the full amount
which he would have received otherwise, or else to trust to replacing
the amount when he may be at his most remunerative age.
Not only is this a great social change, with far-reaching consequences
in the management of property, but it will also act in other lines.
When a man deals with his property in the unchecked privacy of a will,
he can neglect the pressure of personality of his children in favour
of the sentiment of leaving a powerful family name in perpetuity. But
primogeniture must more or less succumb before the obvious personal
claims of those who are joining in the daily life. It requires not only
a flinty heart but also a brazen face, to leave younger sons penniless
when personally distributing the means of ensuring the happiness and
the amenities of life. Hence it is probable that estates will be much
more sub-divided, and sons encouraged to continue to live on corners
of the paternal acres. In short it will be a step toward the French
infinitesimal splitting of property.
This again will act in a fundamental manner on our colonising ability.
Primogeniture has made us a colonising race; no system is so perfect
for ensuring a supply of fit colonists. When each wealthy house in
the land educated two or three sturdy sons, with every benefit of
health and knowledge, and then sent them out to form new centres,
with a small capital to start with, and a reserve of help at home for
any dire emergencies, the most perfect colonising machine had been
evolved. Without these conditions England could never have filled
other continents as she has. When sons stay at home on portions of the
old estate, and have not enough wealth for the high training of their
families, all this colonising power will be at an end. France cannot
colonise because her domestic system does not produce this type of man,
fitted in person and in condition to take up such a life. Our high
death-duties are a certain way to stop educated colonisation.
Another change is also seen resulting from these duties. England, more
than other lands, was rich in private treasure houses of precious
things—pictures, statuary, libraries, and other collections. These
represented a large amount of capital locked up, but it yielded a rich
interest in the home education of the upper classes, in redeeming
them from the dull, unimaginative, coarse, or sordid lives of wealthy
classes in some other lands. So long as a duty only equal to a few
months' or a year's interest was levied, the succession was not too
burdensome, and the state reaped a steady small return. But when
the possession of such means of amenity involves at each generation
a crushing tax on the productive part of an estate, they must be
sacrificed. The collections are vanishing to other lands, where such
short-sighted policy is unknown, and England will be left bare. A
far more profitable policy would have been to exempt all artistic or
historical collections from death-duties, if they were thrown open to
the public for a certain number of days in each year. They would thus
have become partly public museums, provided free of all cost to the
surrounding districts.
Another serious consideration is that 10 or 15 per cent., or even
20 per cent. in case of bequests for public purposes, is taken off
accumulated national capital and thrown into yearly income. The estate
duty is incessantly eating up the national reserves, and using them for
current expenses. We should call any family which did this shameless
spendthrifts, yet this is the immoral fashion of our taxation.
The effect of income tax is one of the most serious economic subjects,
because it directly touches the production of wealth. There is little
objection to income tax for emergencies of war, because if merely
nominal (1_d._ in the pound) during peace, the true amount taxable
will be well known, and a sudden increase will be truly collected and
will not have distinct economic effects if only used for a year or
two. But treating direct tax on incomes as a large source of revenue
has very important effects on a commercial nation. A tax as high as
1_s._ in the pound is practically a tax on all English enterprise
as compared with foreign. If a mill can be run at Calais to produce
non-dutiable articles, free of income tax on its dividends, while a
mill at Dover pays 5 per cent. tax on its dividends, that constitutes
a discrimination of 5 per cent. against the English manufacturer's
capital. The outcome of the whole is that all shares of English
companies will stand permanently at 5 per cent. lower value than the
shares of foreign companies. Or in other words £4 interest will have to
be paid by an English company for £95 raised by debenture, while the
foreign company will raise £100 for the same interest. The immediate
result is that investments will increasingly be made in foreign
governments and companies, whose dividends are payable _abroad_,
instead of in London. This is not merely an evasion of tax, but it is
perfectly legal if the dividends are spent abroad. No one need pay
tax on any cost of foreign travel or residence if they draw the money
from foreign sources, and do not let it be trapped in London. Thus
there will be an ever increasing demand for purely foreign investment,
according to the amount of tax on the investments in England. If
the proposal was carried out to tax all investments much higher as
"unearned income," it would cripple all English manufacture for lack of
the capital, which would be driven abroad to escape the tax. It might
be thought that other governments will come into line, and tax equally
with ours; but if they see their own commercial advantage they will be
very loth to put this bar on English capital flowing into their land
to gain freedom. Even if France and Germany did as we do, it might be
well worth while for Monaco to become the financial centre of Europe by
having no income tax on companies centred there. The recent De Beers
decision illustrates this very clearly. A company with its work abroad,
and its investors largely abroad, is taxed on all its income because
it uses a few square yards of space in London as an office. Obviously
it will not remain. London will no longer be the centre of commercial
work of the world if 5 per cent. or perhaps 10 per cent. is the price
to be paid by all who use it. No company will remain in England that
is not fixed by its works being here, and all those who are fixed here
will work at a permanent disadvantage compared to the foreigner. It
is doubtless thought that the large income yielded by the interest on
the national debt is a safe and easy subject of taxation; Italy indeed
raises 20 per cent. income tax on its debt interest. But this tax is
purely nominal, as it is discounted in the price of stock, and such a
government is merely paying with the left hand what it takes with the
right. The case is seen clearly in Italian stock which stands at 20
per cent. lower value than it otherwise would; that is to say, that
Italy pays say £4 for the loan of £80 now, instead of for the loan of
£100 which it would receive if this tax was not imposed. The same is
equally true of the tax as applied to government salaries; it cannot
be evaded, and therefore it is merely a diminution of the salary, or a
depreciation of the quality of men obtained for the nominal salary. A
government cannot tax its own payments by any financial jugglery. Of
course a government can cheat like a private person; promise a certain
payment, and then break its word, and pay less by a tax. But that is
only a transient profit raised by the sale of its character, and is not
a permanent bargain.
Another effect of income tax will be seen if the proposed higher
grading of incomes is carried out. The same changes that we have traced
owing to the death duties will be produced by the life duties. Property
will be sub-divided wherever possible. Every child will have a trust
created for its benefit, every member of a family will have a separate
income, every large estate will be nominally the property of a group
of independent persons—a family club. This will tend, like the death
duties, toward equal shares, instead of the parent hive system of
primogeniture; and it likewise marks the end of educated colonising.
The effect of this may be good for family life, but it will be
disastrous commercially. There will no longer be the large capitalists
who can take the risks of great enterprises. To raise a large floating
capital for great undertakings will require the co-operation of so many
small capitalists, that it will not be worth while for any one investor
to give time to the affair. The lack of personal concern and interest,
and the cost of dealing with widely collected capital, will all be a
detriment to enterprises of large extent.
But the most disastrous as well as immoral kind of taxation will be
that proposed as additional upon all permanent investments, under
the guise of "unearned income." It is a fatally easy screw for a
government to put on; but the effect of it will be to penalise all
British manufacture in competition with foreign productions. All that
we have noticed about the effect of a 5 per cent. tax will apply far
more rapidly and decisively if a 10 per cent. tax should be put on.
Shippers would sail under another flag and transfer their offices of
registration; manufacturers would pass to a tax-free country; and a
larger proportion of persons living on fixed income would spend it
abroad. Beside the material disadvantages of such high taxation on
enterprise, it would be a grave moral detriment.
It is too often forgotten that in taxation the government wields one
of the greatest means of moral education. What does it say now by its
taxation? Suppose a man to have saved £100, and to consider whether
he will spend it on unremunerative pleasures, or on useful public
works. The government says, "If you will spend your money on waste
and luxury, paying for useless and monstrous rooms, making men stand
idle in your hall, or decorate your extravagant food; if you will make
women waste their eyes and lives on a fresh absurdity of fashion, or
sell their souls; or if you will pay boys to become ne'er-do-weels on
golf-links—in short if you will do as much mischief as possible, we
will take 5 per cent. of your money. But if you spend it on benefiting
the world, improving cultivation, building railways, opening the waste
places and making them blossom, we will take 18 per cent., and leave
you only £82 out of your £100." That is to say 5 per cent. on the
original earning of the capital, 5 per cent. tax on investment income,
and 10 per cent. on death duties, as estimated on large capital by
the Income Tax Commission, 1906. And if the proposed higher taxing
of so-called "unearned income" were carried out, this government
claim would rise to 23 per cent. or even higher. In all reason, after
money when earned has paid its tax of 5 per cent. it should be free
of all further claims, at least if employed for public utility, and
there should be no tax on dividends whatever, nor any death duties
on savings; all such taxation falls eventually on the capital of the
useful undertakings, and directly cripples the industry of the country.
The only way to escape the deadly effects of income tax upon home
manufactures and produce would be to lay a countervailing duty on all
imports, and a bounty on all exports. Then, and only then, would the
manufacturer or farmer here be on exactly the same footing as one
abroad. Then, and only then, would free trade be really carried out.
So long as taxes fall on home production or home capital, which do not
fall similarly abroad, so long free trade cannot exist.
Another highly immoral view of taxation is that of "plucking the
goose so that it feels it least." Such a maxim was appropriate and
excellent for an opportunist minister of an autocratic sovereign. But
the first necessity for the political health of a democracy is that
the individual shall feel every tax; such is the only way to prevent
the squandering of public money by the votes of ignorant taxpayers. It
would be very wholesome if the national expenditure was presented as a
series of personal bills, showing how much was spent on each department
by an average £50, or £100, or £200 householder. He would then be as
much ashamed of the smallness of some items as of the largeness of
others.
What is needed in place of the tax upon industry is a tax upon
extravagance. We are accustomed to taxes which far exceed the prime
cost upon tobacco and alcohol; and other luxuries should also be
similarly taxed. If instead of taxing income (which is often requisite
for reasonable living, or else usefully spent on improvements of the
world), we had the luxuries taxed, the only people to complain (if the
change were gradual) would be those who wasted instead of using their
income. Let all ostentation be taxed very heavily, spacious rooms,
large numbers of servants, costly food, motor cars (not professionally
needed), entrance money for amusements, and tailors' and milliners'
bills; and then a much smaller amount of such extravagance will equally
bespeak wealth, and gain as much social consideration as at present.
Such would be a moral taxation in place of the present wholly immoral
and indefensible system of taxing industry and leaving waste unchecked.
We will now look to other eventual results of small continual action.
The effect of transferring little by little the property in Irish
land to the present occupiers has not been sufficiently noticed. For
the present generation such a transference was merry enough to the
tenant. But when he sells to another tenant what is to happen? Will a
future tenant enter and gradually expropriate the present tenant, by
treating him as a landlord? Certainly the present tenant will not be
so foolish as to be thus trapped, he will demand money on the nail.
How then is the future tenant to get his capital to buy the land? In
most cases he will have to get it by borrowing on mortgage. And if
the government is not prepared to always keep open a loan office for
every incoming tenant to the end of time, a loan society or company
must be his resort. Then if he should not pay this rent to the distant
intangible society, his mortgage will be foreclosed. In place of a body
of landlords, and landlords' agents who could always be personally
approached, Ireland will fall into the hands of a landlordism of
distant money-lenders without souls or feelings, and whom neither
blandishments nor bullets can affect.
The remedy for land difficulties and various ills, that has been so
often proposed, namely the State ownership of the land, is by no means
promising. The greatest objection that can be flung at a landlord is
that he is an absentee. No amount of agency, no excellence in the
subordinate, is thought to compensate for the personal interest, the
personal influence and care, of a good conscientious landlord spending
his life among his tenants. Yet the State ownership would be worse
than any absentee landlord. The agent would be that of an impersonal
government, and responsible to nobody so long as he fulfilled a certain
set of hard rules. He would have no personality more or less pliable
behind him, but would blindly carry out the general dictates of a
Parliament or a Revenue office, which neither knew nor cared about
any personal exceptions or local details. We all know the ways of the
Inland Revenue already; the extortions which have to be tediously
reclaimed at a greater cost of time than the refunded money is worth;
the starving of the Post Office in order to wring a profit of 50 per
cent. on the whole correspondence of the country; the various illegal
demands which have had to be resisted by legal trial, and appeal over
appeal, at a ruinous cost to those who will not be cheated; we see in
France and Italy the atrophy of a railway system which is ruled by
government officials. And yet unobservant enthusiasts wish that every
field should be under some petty official tied by red tape, and every
farmer bound by laws and regulations which could never be applied to
even a small district without individual hardship. The townsman cannot
be allowed to play political experiments with the largest industry of
England, of which he is profoundly ignorant: it must rest with the
farmer only, to decide if he prefer to be under the Inland Revenue
or under his landlord. It is notorious that government lands are
administered more wastefully and less remuneratively than any private
property; and it would be ruinous to tie up the whole country to such
administration. It is useless to say that these are mere abuses which
must be rectified. Let them be rectified in the minor scale first,
before the system can be applied in the major scale. There is no kind
of government in the world that would not ruin this country if it
introduced State ownership. Human nature does not allow of it, and only
ignorance of human nature could propose it.
Another large effect of trifles is seen in the cumulative character
of borrowers. Mr. Harold Cox, M.P., has reminded those who are in
favour of rather confiscatory proposals, that a loss of character of
a public body, so that their good faith is not certain, may easily
mean that they have to pay 4 per cent. instead of 3 per cent. for
loans: and hence that all rents of public works paid for by loans will
have to be 33 per cent. higher. This loss is far more than could be
gained by entire confiscation of ground values, and entire ruin of all
landlords. That this is by no means only a future risk may be seen in
the stock list any day. India is not entirely safe; there are risks
of financial ruin—by conquest, by ruinous wars against invasion, by
ruin in insurrection, by ejectment, or by having to drop India owing
to a collapse of the navy. Yet all these risks together are thought
to be less than the risk of bad faith on the London County Council.
Their stock stands at a lower price than India stock. Such is the large
result of the many little touches of folly and extravagance which have
lowered the financial barometer.
Another instance of remote changes is in the effects of the steam
engine and other cheap and rapid communication. The full extent of the
changes caused are yet far from being completed. Externally the great
change is that of the equalisation of land values for agriculture all
over the world, as the produce can be carried from land to land for a
small part of its value. Hence tropical lands with rapid growth and
high fertility will compete with others; and the cheapness of labour
there, owing to the smaller requirements in a warmer climate, will
react on all agricultural wages. There will also be a demand for cheap
labour to work tropical lands to their full extent; and the facility
for transportation of labourers will result in constantly shifting
energetic people from rather cooler climates into the hotter land for
a time, and withdrawing them again. The same system we already carry
out for governing classes in India; and cheap transport will make it
possible for an energetic race to hold hot countries continuously,
without decay due to enervation by climate, as was the case in all
earlier northern invaders.
Internally the changes owing to cheap communication are that land of
similar quality equalises in value; and hence the worst land will
fall to bottom price all over the country, and cannot be locally of
any higher value. Also it will be difficult to get people to live in
unpleasant districts, as they can easily shift about; hence wages will
need to be higher in such districts, and therefore the land will be
still lower. Thus the mobility of the inhabitants exaggerates the
variation of land values already due to differing quality. The more
bulky industries that need cheap land, and not much labour, will be
fixed in the unpleasant districts; and peasant proprietors will tend to
the worse land, as being abnormally low in value. Regarding movement of
population only, as capable men can move about freely to get work that
gives them full scope, the less capable will supplant the capable in
all work that they are able to do. Hence we shall no longer find men
of high quality leading simple lives in remote districts. The gain to
the whole community is clear, but we lose one of the most interesting
types of national character. The free and rapid transit in cities will
cause them to be much less crowded in one mass. At Chicago men go to
business from five miles out in five minutes. Our cumbrous stoppages
along the whole route must be entirely given up for the outer districts
of London. What is needed is a series of new centres twenty to thirty
miles out of London; joined, some to the City, some to the West End,
by non-stop trains, at sixty miles an hour. Such is certainly the
type of great city which will finally be reached—a county covered
with separate centres linked by trains at the highest speed. As we
shall note further on, the development of great equatorial estates of
European powers, and the growth of immense permanent armaments are both
the inevitable result of rapid communication. We see thus how the whole
type of human life and conditions has been altered, and the whole balance
of circumstances readjusted, by the evolution of cheap motor power.
We have already noticed another effect of this change, in the increase
of emigration draining the more capable persons from England, and so
leaving a residue inferior in energy, initiative and self-reliance.
This deterioration of the occupants of England and Ireland is thus due
to the purely mechanical contrivance of a steam engine.
We have now traced the large effects of small economic causes, and
we see how such apparently insignificant alterations may be far more
effective and act far more beneficially than smashing the social
machine with a sledge hammer because it does not run smoothly. We will
now turn to look at some of the effects of favourite ideas of the
present time.
The compensation to workmen for accident seems at first sight a
righteous charge upon capital for the benefit of those who are injured
in their business. The immediate effect upon character is to save
the careless, thoughtless, and incompetent from the results of their
faults; this at once reduces largely the weeding and educational
effects of the bad qualities. No man would ever have become careful
if he did not find the necessity of being so. Even if a tendency to
malingering can be avoided, yet the teaching effect is done away.
It may be thought that it is better to save the individual from his
indiscretions rather than cure the race. Like most sentimentalism it
causes more misery in the long run. Another, and entirely separate,
effect is to prevent the employment of those who by age or bodily
defect are the more liable to accident; the immediate hardship of loss
of employment to these classes is, in the total, probably greater than
the hardship of loss of employment by accidents which it is sought
to compensate. We injure the individual as well as the race by such
grandmothering. A severe law demanding full and adequate protection of
workers, where they can be mechanically protected, is the utmost that
could be beneficially enforced.
The provision of old age pensions is another pleasing scheme. In
the first place it will diminish the need of foresight and of
self-restraint; it will thus weaken character by removing the great
driving force of self-interest. The burden will have to be borne by
all, including those who are already at the last gasp, and will tend
to push such over the border line. It will not discriminate between
those who have borne a large share in the cost of national renewal
by bringing up a family, and those who have selfishly squandered all
they received. And like outdoor poor relief, it will be discounted
in wages, and tend to lower the wage rate if no savings are to be
expected. A sounder plan would be to revert to the kind of communal
system of our forefathers, and make a legal demand for a pension of,
say, £2 a year from every child, and 10_s._ a year from every grown
up nephew or grandchild. Thus those who have done most for the State
by renewal would receive most in return, and the greatest inducement
would be given to bring up children to active and capable lives. The
idea of a right to maintenance would be the knell of any State which
undertook it. The endowment of wastrels, the taxing of all the capable
for the propagation of the incapable, and the wholesale deterioration
of character, would be utter ruin to a nation. Nature knows of no right
to maintenance, but only the necessity of getting rid of those who need
it by mending or ending them.
There is another movement which seems most desirable and humane at
first sight, and irreproachable in its economic aspect: the saving of
infant life by greater care. A huge waste of life is going on, and
it has been proved that it is preventable. But however much we must
sympathise with it, we cannot shut our eyes to its meaning. England
produces over 300,000 excess of births over deaths yearly, and perhaps
a tenth more might be added to that by care of infant life. But would
that tenth be of the best stock or the worst? We must agree that it
would be of the lower, or lowest type of careless, thriftless, dirty,
and incapable families that the increase would be obtained. Is it worth
while to dilute our increase of population by 10 per cent. more of the
most inferior kind? Will England be stronger for having one thirtieth
more, and that of the worst stock, added to the population every year?
This movement is doing away with one of the few remains of natural
weeding out of the unfit that our civilisation has left to us. And it
will certainly cause more misery than happiness in the course of a
century.
Lastly, let us look to the general question of the results of the
accumulation of wealth in the hands of different classes. Roughly we
may divide three classes of money-earners: the lower, who receive
weekly pay, and are tempted to spend it all by the certainty of poor
relief when needed; the middle, who receive yearly pay, and must
save if they are to avoid losing caste in late life; the upper, who
make large but uncertain profits by organising work, or by financial
manipulation, regular or irregular. During the last century we have
seen a great growth of wealth in England. At first it spread to
workmen and manufacturers, then to the middle classes generally, and
latterly much has accumulated in the hands of large operators with
trusts and financial dealings. What has been the result of the wealth
in the hands of each class, to that class, and to the whole community?
The rise of workmen's pay has mainly been used up; there has been a
great benefit by improving the conditions of life, but perhaps half of
the increase has been lost in mere waste; very little has gone toward
lifting families to a higher class, and but a very small proportion
has been saved. The whole property of the poor is estimated now at
nearly a year's income, the result of savings in a century, or less
than 1 per cent. saved. When we turn to the middle classes there is
a worse spectacle. There was, broadly speaking, but little need to
raise the standard of expenditure among the middle classes. They
were fairly comfortable, and need not have spent more on themselves;
their gains might have been spent on profitable enterprises, or given
for endowments to public purposes. On the contrary, but a small part
of their gains have been saved or remuneratively spent, and far the
greater part has disappeared in ever-increasing ostentation. It has
been turned into a curse by creating an absurdly artificial standard of
living and of sociality, so burdensome that every man is ashamed to ask
a friend to the leg of mutton dinners of his grandfather's standard.
It is thought mean to spend less per head on a single dinner than the
amount which ought to keep a man in comfort for a couple of weeks.
Real, genial sociality has been uprooted and killed in the senseless
race of ostentation. And practically nothing has been done for public
benefits by endowments. As a manufacturer in a park, with a motor,
remarked, "you cannot expect anyone not to spend up to his income." The
idea of using what is really requisite for successful living, and not
squandering money beyond that, is entirely forgotten. The simplicity
of having nothing that is unnecessary, the pleasure of having a large
balance to use beyond the needs of life, and the comfort of never
needing to worry about money, are all unknown to those who spend up to
the hilt, and who turn their money into a grinding curse of life. The
distribution of surplus wealth among the middle classes has proved an
entire failure in national economics.
Now, lastly, the surplus is passing into a new class, the large
business speculator, the financier, and trust-man. So far as we can
yet see, this class is justifying itself far more than the middle
class. In fifty years the middle classes have not given as much to
endow education as the millionaires have given in five years. A man
with a gigantic income cannot spend more than a few per cent. of
it on himself. He must use it for large public enterprises which
benefit mankind. To put it in another form, a great dealer has
organised a method for taxing the community in such a way that they
do not notice it. And if he spends the tax on public improvements or
endowments—railways, new inventions, or universities—he is an active
benefactor to the whole community. He sponges up the surplus which
would otherwise be frittered away in ostentation or luxury, and drops
it out where it is a permanent benefit. As a principle we may hate the
trust-man and multi-millionaire, but he may be a lesser curse than the
extravagant middle or lower-class man. War is hateful, but it may be a
lesser curse than rotting in peace. So long as the average man shows
by his selfish luxury that he is incapable of managing wealth, so long
the private taxer—who prevents some of the waste—will be a positive
blessing to the community. The evolution of the great money-manager
type now going on is a distinct step forward in the prevention of
waste, and the growth of a better system of expenditure. A million
pounds a year scattered over a hundred thousand men will be all eaten
up in luxuries or lost in folly; spread among a thousand men it will
only swell their wasteful pride of life; but put it in the hands of ten
men who have worked for it, and they will spend most of it in useful
work that will bear fruit. Until the education, moral and intellectual,
of the average man is on a higher plane, it will be well for the
surplus wealth to be in the safer hands of those who have proved their
capacity for avoiding waste. The evolution of society is not fitted at
present for a wealthy middle-class, or a proletariat domination.
We have now seen in many directions how great are the changes in the
constitution of society, which are brought about by a succession of
small movements, each of which imperceptibly bears its share in the
change. We see thus how carefully small tendencies should be watched;
and we learn how needless and often how futile is a violent uprooting
of institutions instead of a gradual growth.
Another lesson to note is that every attempt to interfere by
legislation in the natural working of causes is more likely to do
harm than good. The long lesson, which it took all the middle ages to
teach, was that legislative interference with trade always did harm;
we have come to believe that in a half-hearted way, but we are still
perpetually longing to tinker society by interfering with natural cause
and effect.