_February 4, 1867._
4. Limiting the inquiry, then, for the present, as proposed in the
close of my last letter, to the form of co-operation which is now upon
its trial in practice, I would beg of you to observe that the points
at issue, in the comparison of this system with that of mastership,
are by no means hitherto frankly stated; still less can they as yet be
fairly brought to test. For all mastership is not alike in principle;
there are just and unjust masterships; and while, on the one hand,
there can be no question but that co-operation is better than unjust
and tyrannous mastership, there is very great room for doubt whether
it be better than a just and benignant mastership.
5. At present you--every one of you--speak, and act, as if there were
only one alternative; namely, between a system in which profits shall
be divided in due proportion among all; and the present one, in which
the workman is paid the least wages he will take, under the pressure
of competition in the labor-market. But an intermediate method is
conceivable; a method which appears to me more prudent, and in its
ultimate results more just, than the co-operative one. An arrangement
may be supposed, and I have good hope also may one day be effected, by
which every subordinate shall be paid sufficient and regular wages,
according to his rank; by which due provision shall be made out of the
profits of the business for sick and superannuated workers; and by
which the master, _being held responsible, as a minor king or
governor, for the conduct as well as the comfort of all those under
his rule_, shall, on that condition, be permitted to retain to his own
use the surplus profits of the business which the fact of his being
its master may be assumed to prove that he has organized by superior
intellect and energy. And I think this principle of regular
wage-paying, whether it be in the abstract more just, or not, is at
all events the more prudent; for this reason mainly, that in spite of
all the cant which is continually talked by cruel, foolish, or
designing persons about "the duty of remaining content in the position
in which Providence has placed you," there is a root of the very
deepest and holiest truth in the saying, which gives to it such power
as it still retains, even uttered by unkind and unwise lips, and
received into doubtful and embittered hearts.
6. If, indeed, no effort be made to discover, in the course of their
early training, for what services the youths of a nation are
individually qualified; nor any care taken to place those who have
unquestionably proved their fitness for certain functions, in the
offices they could best fulfil,--then, to call the confused wreck of
social order and life brought about by malicious collision and
competition, an arrangement of Providence, is quite one of the most
insolent and wicked ways in which it is possible to take the name of
God in vain. But if, at the proper time, some earnest effort be made
to place youths, according to their capacities, in the occupations for
which they are fitted, I think the system of organization will be
finally found the best, which gives the least encouragement to
thoughts of any great future advance in social life.
7. The healthy sense of progress, which is necessary to the strength
and happiness of men, does not consist in the anxiety of a struggle to
attain higher place, or rank, but in gradually perfecting the manner,
and accomplishing the ends, of the life which we have chosen, or which
circumstances have determined for us. Thus, I think the object of a
workman's ambition should not be to become a master; but to attain
daily more subtle and exemplary skill in his own craft, to save from
his wages enough to enrich and complete his home gradually with more
delicate and substantial comforts; and to lay by such store as shall
be sufficient for the happy maintenance of his old age (rendering him
independent of the help provided for the sick and indigent by the
arrangement pre-supposed), and sufficient also for the starting of his
children in a rank of life equal to his own. If his wages are not
enough to enable him to do this, they are unjustly low; if they are
once raised to this adequate standard, I do not think that by the
possible increase of his gains under contingencies of trade, or by
divisions of profits with his master, he should be enticed into
feverish hope of an entire change of condition; and as an almost
necessary consequence, pass his days in an anxious discontent with
immediate circumstances, and a comfortless scorn of his daily life,
for which no subsequent success could indemnify him. And I am the more
confident in this belief, because, even supposing a gradual rise in
social rank possible for all well-conducted persons, my experience
does not lead me to think the elevation itself, when attained, would
be conducive to their happiness.
8. The grounds of this opinion I will give you in a future letter; in
the present one, I must pass to a more important point--namely, that
if this stability of condition be indeed desirable for those in whom
existing circumstances might seem to justify discontent, much more
must it be good and desirable for those who already possess everything
which can be conceived necessary to happiness. It is the merest
insolence of selfishness to preach contentment to a laborer who gets
thirty shillings a week, while we suppose an active and plotting
covetousness to be meritorious in a man who has three thousand a year.
In this, as in all other points of mental discipline, it is the duty
of the upper classes to set an example to the lower; and to recommend
and justify the restraint of the ambition of their inferiors, chiefly
by severe and timely limitation of their own. And, without at present
inquiring into the greater or less convenience of the possible methods
of accomplishing such an object, (every detail in suggestions of this
kind necessarily furnishing separate matter of dispute,) I will merely
state my long-fixed conviction, that one of the most important
conditions of a healthful system of social economy, would be the
restraint of the properties and incomes of the upper classes within
certain fixed limits. The temptation to use every energy in the
accumulation of wealth being thus removed, another, and a higher ideal
of the duties of advanced life would be necessarily created in the
national mind; by withdrawal of those who had attained the prescribed
limits of wealth from commercial competition, earlier worldly success,
and earlier marriage, with all its beneficent moral results, would
become possible to the young; while the older men of active intellect,
whose sagacity is now lost or warped in the furtherance of their own
meanest interests, would be induced unselfishly to occupy themselves
in the superintendence of public institutions, or furtherance of
public advantage. And out of this class it would be found natural and
prudent always to choose the members of the legislative body of the
Commons; and to attach to the order also some peculiar honors, in the
possession of which such complacency would be felt as would more than
replace the unworthy satisfaction of being supposed richer than
others, which to many men is the principal charm of their wealth. And
although no law of this purport would ever be imposed on themselves by
the actual upper classes, there is no hindrance to its being gradually
brought into force from beneath, without any violent or impatient
proceedings; and this I will endeavor to show you in my next letter.