retainers by millions to get the ground plan of what exists in every
country where there is a class of owners, with a great police force and
an army to protect their property, great numbers of servants to wait on
them, and masses of workers making luxuries for them, all supported by
the labor of the really useful workers who have to support themselves
as well. Whether an increase of population will make the country richer
or poorer depends, not on the natural fruitfulness of the earth, but
on whether the additional people are set to do useful work or not. If
they are, then the country will be richer. If, however, the additional
people are set to work unproductively for the property owners as
servants, or armed guardians of the rights of property, or in any of
the other callings and professions to minister only to the owners,
then the country will be poorer, though the property owners may become
richer, the display of diamonds and fine dresses and cars much more
splendid, and the servants and other retainers receiving higher wages
and more schooling than their grandfathers.
In the natural course of things the more people there are in a country
the richer it ought to be, because of the advantage of division of
labor. Division of labor means that instead of every man having to
do everything for himself like Robinson Crusoe, the different sorts
of work are done by different sets of men, who become very quick and
skilful at their job by doing nothing else. Also their work can be
directed by others who give their whole minds to directing it. The time
saved in this way can be used in making machinery, roads, and all sorts
of contrivances for saving more time and labor later on. That is how
twenty workers can produce more than twice what ten can produce, and a
hundred much more than five times what twenty can produce. If wealth
and the labor of producing it were equally shared, a population of a
hundred would be much better off than a population of ten, and so on up
to modern populations of millions, which ought to be enormously better
off than the old communities of thousands. The fact that they are
either very little better off or sometimes actually worse off, is due
wholly to the idlers and idlers’ parasites who are plundering them as
we plunder the poor bees.
I must not, however, let you believe that if we all shared equally the
increase of wealth per head could go on for ever. Human beings can
multiply very fast under favorable conditions. A single pair, if their
posterity managed their affairs well enough to avoid war, pestilence,
and premature death, might have twenty million descendants alive at
the end of four hundred years. If all the couples now alive were to
multiply at that rate there would soon not be standing room on the
earth, much less fields to grow wheat in. There is a limit to the
quantity of food the earth can yield to labor; and if there were no
limit to the increase of population we should at last find that instead
of increasing our shares of food by breeding more human beings, we
should diminish them.
Though we now cultivate the skies by extracting nitrogen from the air,
other considerations than that of food will check our multiplication.
Man does not live by bread alone; and it is possible for people to
be overfed and overcrowded at the same time. After the war there was
no exceptional scarcity of food in England; but there was a terrible
scarcity of houses. Our cities are monstrously overcrowded: to provide
every family they contain with a comfortably spacious house and garden
some of our streets would have to be spread over miles of country. Some
day we may have to make up our minds how many people we need to keep us
all healthy, and stick to that number until we see reason to change it.
In this matter the women who have to bear the children must be
considered. It is possible for a woman to bear twenty children. In
certain country districts in Europe families of fifteen are not
uncommon enough to be regarded as extraordinary. But though a properly
cared-for woman of vigorous constitution, with her confinements
reasonably spaced out, can apparently stand this strain without
permanent disablement or damage, and remain as well and strong as
women who have borne no children at all, yet the bearing of each
child involves a long period of discomfort and sickness, culminating
in temporary disablement, severe pain, and a risk of death. The
father escapes this; but at present he has to earn wages to support
the children while they are growing; and though there may be plenty
of employment for them when they come to working age, that does not
provide any bread and butter for them in the meantime. Consequently an
increase of population that benefits the country and the world may be
an almost unbearable burden to the parents. They therefore restrict
their families to the number the father can afford, or the mother cares
to bear, except when they do not know how this can be done, or are
forbidden by their religion to practise birth control.
This has a very important bearing on the equal distribution of income.
To understand this I must go back a little, and seem to change the
subject; but the connexion will soon be plain.
If the workers in all occupations are to receive the same income, how
are we to deal with the fact that though the cost of living is the
same for all workers, whether they are philosophers or farm hands, the
cost of their work varies very greatly. A woman in the course of a
day’s work may use up a reel of cotton costing a few pence whilst her
husband, if a scientific worker, may require some radium, which costs
£16,000 an ounce. The gunners on the battle-fields in Flanders, working
at a dreadful risk of life and limb, needed very little money for
themselves; but the cost of the materials they used up in a single day
was prodigious. If they had had to pay on the nail, out of their wages,
for the cannons they wore out and the shells they fired, there would
have been no war.
This inequality of expense cannot be got over by any sort of adjustment
of leisure or holidays or privileges of any sort between worker and
worker. Still less can it be met by unequal wages. Even the maddest
upholder of our wage system will not propose that the man who works
a steam hammer costing many thousands of pounds should have wages
proportionately higher than the wages of the navvy who swings a
sledgehammer or the woodcutter who wields a beetle costing shillings
instead of thousands of pounds. The worker cannot bear the cost of his
materials and implements if he is to have only an equal share of the
national income: he must either be supplied with them, or repaid for
them in the cases in which he has to supply them at his own cost.
Applying this to the labor of child-bearing and the cost of supporting
children, it is clear that the expenses of both should not be borne
by the parents. At present they are repaid very insufficiently by
maternity benefits and by an allowance off income tax for each child
in the family. Under a system of equal division of income each child
would be entitled to its share from birth; and the parents would be
the trustees for the children, subject, no doubt, to the obligation of
satisfying the Public Trustee, if any neglect were reported, that the
children were getting the full benefit of their incomes. In this way a
family of growing children would always be in easy circumstances; and
the mother could face the labor and risk of bearing them for the sake
of motherhood’s natural privileges, dignities, and satisfaction.
But it is conceivable that such pleasant conditions, combined with
early marriages and the disappearance of the present terrible infant
mortality, would lead to a greater increase of population than might
seem desirable, or, what is equally inconvenient, a faster increase;
for the pace of the increase is very important: it might be desirable
to double the population in a hundred years and very undesirable to
double it in fifty. Thus it may become necessary to control our numbers
purposely in new ways.
What are the present ways? How is the population kept down to the
numbers our system of unequal sharing can support? They are mostly very
dreadful and wicked ways. They include war, pestilence, and poverty
that causes multitudes of children to die of bad feeding and clothing
and housing before they are a year old. Operating side by side with
these horrors, we have the practice of artificial birth control by
the parents on such an enormous scale that among the educated classes
which resort to it, including the skilled artisan class, population
is actually decreasing seriously. In France the Government, dreading
a dearth of soldiers, urges the people to have more children to make
up a deficiency of twenty millions as compared with Germany. To such
restrictions on population must be added the criminal practice of
abortion, which is terribly prevalent, and, in eastern countries, the
more straightforward custom of frank infanticide by literally throwing
away the unwanted child, especially the female child, and leaving it
to perish of exposure. The humane Mahomet could not convince the Arabs
that this was sinful; but he told them that on the Day of Judgment the
female child that was exposed would rise up and ask “What fault did I
commit?” In spite of Mahomet children are still exposed in Asia; and
when exposure is effectually prevented by law as it is in nominally
Christian countries, the unwanted children die in such numbers from
neglect, starvation, and ill-usage, that they, too, may well ask on the
Day of Judgment “Would it not have been kinder to expose us?”
Of all these methods of keeping down the population there can be
no doubt that artificial birth control: that is, the prevention of
conception, is the most humane and civilized, and by far the least
demoralizing. Bishops and cardinals have denounced it as sinful; but
their authority in the matter is shaken by their subjection to the
tradition of the early Christians, for whom there was no population
question. They believed also that marriage is sinful in itself, whether
conception be prevented or not. Thus our Churchmen are obliged to
start by assuming that sex is a curse imposed on us by the original
sin of Eve. But we do not get rid of a fact by calling it a curse and
trying to ignore it. We must face it with one eye on the alternatives
to birth control, and the other on the realities of our sexual nature.
The practical question for the mass of mankind is not whether the
population shall be kept down or not, but whether it shall be kept down
by preventing the conception of children or by bringing them into the
world and then slaughtering them by abortion, exposure, starvation,
neglect, ill-usage, plague, pestilence and famine, battle, murder
and sudden death. I defy any bishop or cardinal to choose the latter
alternatives. St Paul abhorred marriage; but he said “Better marry than
burn”. Our bishops and cardinals may abhor contraception (so do I, by
the way); but which of them would not say, when put to it like St Paul,
“Better have no children, by whatever means, than have them and kill
them as we are killing them at present”.
We have seen how our present unequal sharing of the national income has
forced this question of Birth Control prematurely on us whilst there
is still plenty of room left in the world. Canada and Australia seem
underpopulated; but the Australians say that their waste spaces are
uninhabitable, though the overcrowded Japanese are restrained only
by our military prestige from saying “Well, if you will not inhabit
them, we will”. We have birth control even where the Churches struggle
hardest against it. The only thing that can check it is the abolition
of the artificial poverty that has produced it prematurely. As equal
division of income can do this, those who dislike birth control and
would defer it to the latest possible moment, have that reason as well
as all the others we have studied, for advocating equal division.
When the last possible moment comes, nobody can foresee how the
necessary restriction of the population will be effected. It may be
that Nature will interfere and take the matter out of our hands. This
possibility is suggested by the fact that the number of children born
seems to vary according to the need for them. When they are exposed to
such dangers and hard conditions that very few of them can be expected
to survive, Nature, without any artificial interference, produces
enormous numbers to provide against the complete extinction of the
species. We have all heard of the codfish with its million eggs and of
the queen bee laying four thousand eggs a day. Human beings are less
prolific; but even within human limits Nature apparently distinguishes
between poor, undernourished, uncultivated, defective people whose
children die early and in great numbers, and people who are fully
cultivated mentally and physically. The defectives are appallingly
prolific: the others have fewer children even when they do not practise
birth control. It is one of the troubles of our present civilization
that the inferior stocks are outbreeding the superior ones. But the
inferior stocks are really starved stocks, slum stocks, stocks not
merely uncultivated but degraded by their wretched circumstances. By
getting rid of poverty we should get rid of these circumstances and of
the inferior stocks they produce; and it is not at all unlikely that in
doing so we should get rid of the exaggerated fertility by which Nature
tries to set off the terrible infant mortality among them.
For if Nature can and does increase fertility to prevent the extinction
of a species by excessive mortality, need we doubt that she can and
will decrease it to prevent its extinction by overcrowding? It is
certain that she does, in a mysterious way, respond to our necessities,
or rather to her own. But her way is one that we do not understand.
The people who say that if we improve the condition of the world it
will be overpopulated are only pretending to understand it. If the
Socialists were to say positively that Nature will keep the population
within bounds under Socialism without artificial birth control, they
would be equally pretending to understand it. The sensible course
is to improve the condition of the world and see what will happen,
or, as some would say, trust in God that evil will not come out of
good. All that concerns us at present is that as the overpopulation
difficulty has not yet arisen except in the artificial form produced
by our unequal distribution of income, and curable by a better
distribution, it would be ridiculous to refrain from making ourselves
more comfortable on the ground that we may find ourselves getting
uncomfortable again later on. We should never do anything at all if we
listened to the people who tell us that the sun is cooling, or the end
of the world coming next year, or the increase of population going to
eat us off the face of the earth, or, generally, that all is vanity and
vexation of spirit. It would be quite sensible to say “Let us eat and
drink; for tomorrow we die” if only we were certain about tomorrow; but
it would be foolish anyhow to say “It is not worth while to live today;
for we shall die tomorrow”. It is just like saying “It will be all the
same a thousand years hence” as lazy people do when they have neglected
their duties. The fact is that the earth can accommodate its present
population more comfortably than it does or ever did; and whilst we
last we may as well make ourselves as comfortable as we can.
Note that as long as two persons can produce more than twice as much
as one, and two million very much more than twice as much as one
million, the earth is said by the political economists to be under the
Law of Increasing Return. And if ever we reach a point when there will
be more people than the earth can feed properly, and the next child
born will make the whole world poorer, then the earth will be under
the Law of Diminishing Return. If any gentleman tries to persuade you
that the earth is now under the Law of Diminishing Return you may
safely conclude that he has been told to say so at a university for
the sons of the rich, who would like you to believe that their riches,
and the poverty of the rest, are brought about by an eternal and
unchangeable law of Nature instead of by an artificial and disastrous
misdistribution of the national income which we can remedy.
All the same, do not overlook the fact that there may be overpopulation
in spots whilst the world as a whole is underpopulated. A boat in
mid ocean, containing ten castaways, a pint of water, and a pound
of biscuits, is terribly overpopulated. The cottage of a laborer
with thirty shillings a week and eight children is overpopulated. A
tenement house with twelve rooms and fifty people living in them is
overpopulated. London is abominably overpopulated. Therefore, though
there is no world population question, and the world is under the law
of increasing return, there are innumerable spots in the world which
are overpopulated and under the law of diminishing return. Equality of
income would enable the unfortunate denizens of these plague spots to
escape from the slavery of diminishing returns to the prosperity of
increasing returns.
26
THE DIAGNOSTIC OF SOCIALISM
We have now disposed of the only common objections to equal division
of income not dealt with in our earlier examination of the various
ways in which income is or might be unequally divided. And we have
done the whole business without bothering over what the Socialists
say, or quoting any of their books. You see how any intelligent woman,
sitting down to decide for herself how the national income should be
distributed, and without having ever heard the word Socialism or read
a line by any Socialist writer, may be driven by her own common sense
and knowledge of the world to the conclusion that the equal plan is the
only permanent and prosperous one possible in a free community. If you
could find a better way out of our present confusion and misery for us,
you would be hailed as one of the greatest of discoverers.
“And if I cannot,” you will say, “I suppose you will tell me I must
join the Socialists!”
Dear lady: have you ever read St Augustine? If you have, you will
remember that he had to admit that the early Christians were a very
mixed lot, and that some of them were more addicted to blackening their
wives’ eyes for tempting them, and wrecking the temples of the pagans,
than to carrying out the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount. Indeed
you must have noticed that we modern Christians are still a very mixed
lot, and that it is necessary to hang a certain number of us every
year for our country’s good. Now I will be as frank as St Augustine,
and admit that the professed Socialists are also a very mixed lot, and
that if joining them meant inviting them indiscriminately to tea I
should strongly advise you not to do it, as they are just like other
people, which means that some of them steal spoons when they get the
chance. The nice ones are very nice; the general run are no worse than
their neighbors; and the undesirable ones include some of the most
thoroughpaced rascals you could meet anywhere. But what better can you
expect from any political party you could join? You are, I hope, on the
side of the angels; but you cannot join them until you die; and in the
meantime you must put up with mere Conservatives, Liberals, Socialists,
Protestants, Catholics, Dissenters, and other groups of mortal women
and men, very mixed lots all of them, so that when you join them you
have to pick your company just as carefully as if they had no labels
and were entire strangers to you. Carlyle lumped them all as mostly
fools; and who can deny that, on the whole, they deserve it?
But, after all, you are an Intelligent Woman, and know this as well as
I do. What you may be a little less prepared for is that there are a
great many people who call themselves Socialists who do not clearly and
thoroughly know what Socialism is, and would be shocked and horrified
if you told them that you were in favor of dividing-up the income of
the country equally between everybody, making no distinction between
lords and laborers, babies in arms and able-bodied adults, drunkards
and teetotallers, archbishops and sextons, sinners and saints. They
would assure you that all this is a mere ignorant delusion of the
man in the street, and that no educated Socialist believes such
crazy nonsense. What they want, they will tell you, is equality of
opportunity, by which I suppose they mean that Capitalism will not
matter if everyone has an equal opportunity of becoming a Capitalist,
though how that equality of opportunity can be established without
equality of income they cannot explain. Equality of opportunity is
impossible. Give your son a fountain pen and a ream of paper, and tell
him that he now has an equal opportunity with me of writing plays,
and see what he will say to you! Do not let yourself be deceived by
such phrases, or by protestations that you need not fear Socialism
because it does not really mean Socialism. It does; and Socialism means
equality of income and nothing else. The other things are only its
conditions or its consequences.
You may, if you have a taste that way, read all the books that
have been written to explain Socialism. You can study the Utopian
Socialism of Sir Thomas More, the Theocratic Socialism of the Incas,
the speculations of Saint Simon, the Communism of Fourier and Robert
Owen, the so-called Scientific Socialism of Karl Marx, the Christian
Socialism of Canon Kingsley and the Rev. F. D. Maurice, William
Morris’s News from Nowhere (a masterpiece of literary art which you
should read anyhow), the Constitutional Socialism of Sidney and
Beatrice Webb and of the highly respectable Fabian Society, and several
fancy Socialisms preached by young men who have not yet had time to
become celebrated. But clever as they all are, if they do not mean
equality of income they mean nothing that will save civilization. The
rule that subsistence comes first and virtue afterwards is as old as
Aristotle and as new as this book. The Communism of Christ, of Plato,
and of the great religious orders, all take equality in material
subsistence for granted as the first condition of establishing the
Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Whoever has reached this conclusion, by
whatever path, is a Socialist; and whoever has not reached it is no
Socialist, though he or she may profess Socialism or Communism in
passionate harangues from one end of the country to the other, and even
suffer martyrdom for it.
So now you know, whether you agree with it or not, exactly what
Socialism is, and why it is advocated so widely by thoughtful and
experienced people in all classes. Also, you can distinguish between
the genuine Socialists, and the curious collection of Anarchists,
Syndicalists, Nationalists, Radicals, and malcontents of all sorts
who are ignorantly classed as Socialists or Communists or Bolshevists
because they are all hostile to the existing state of things, as well
as the professional politicians, or Careerists, who are deserting
Liberalism for Labor because they think the Liberal ship is sinking.
And you are qualified to take at its proper value the nonsense that
is talked and written every day by anti-Socialist politicians and
journalists who have never given five minutes serious thought to the
subject, and who trot round imaginary Bolshies as boys trot round Guys
on the fifth of November.
27
PERSONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS