What is our problem to-day? It is again the problem of power and
movement; not a new problem, but a very old problem, in fact the eternal
problem dressed up in a new frock. Our problem is to revive our old
industries, so far as they can be revived, and to establish new ones,
for industries, like the human beings who create them, grow old, come on
the pension list and die. Our problem is, as it was during the war, to
shift the population, to demobilize our great army of unemployed, and to
cause it to trickle from our over-populated little island into our
underpopulated Dominions and Colonies. Lastly, our problem is to secure
ourselves against another war.
To-day, we find ourselves in a veritable labyrinth of difficulties, but
there must be a way out, possibly several, for otherwise we could not be
standing in its centre. We have got into it, so we can get out of it, as
we have of many a former maze; but how?
It is here that I think the spirit of George Stephenson can help us, and
it is for this reason that I have taken up so much of this little book
with this great man’s name and work, and with the difficulties he faced
and, undaunted, conquered. His motto was “Perseverance”; let it be ours.
He did not talk over much, but he took his coat off and got to work. He
worked single-handed and was obstructed at every turn. The whole country
was against him, yet he conquered, and, more to him than to any other
man a century ago, it seems to me, were the problems, which then faced
England, solved, and they are the problems which face England now.
As it may be said, and with some truth, in fact a great deal of truth,
that the railway made the war, since it made the peace which preceded
the war, so with equal truth may it be said that the petrol engine,
encased in a tank, by making peace possible, may now make peace
profitable, even if in doing so it begets the germs of another war. In
other words, as the war was so largely won by the tank, so must the
peace which has followed it be largely won by the caterpillar tractor,
or roadless vehicle.
Henry Herbert will vote me to Bedlam, but this is the most encouraging
fact of all, for every new idea must start by being in a minority of
one, such as that of George Stephenson’s against the world. The stronger
the opposition the better the idea, may not be a law of Nature, yet it
is a pretty sound rule, and one with few exceptions. If we persevere and
laugh, the caterpillar tractor will win the peace, and to paraphrase the
words of George Stephenson, I will, in my turn, make a prophecy:
“Now lads, I venture to tell you that I think you will live to see the
day when tracked vehicles will supersede almost all other methods of
conveyance in roadless countries; when armies will be moved across
country and roadless traction will become the chief means of commercial
movement in all undeveloped lands. The time is coming when it will be
cheaper for a farmer or soldier to use a tracked machine than to travel
by rail.”
As it took Mahomet three years to collect thirteen followers, I shall
not be downcast if I collect no greater a number out of the readers of
this book, because perseverance was the motto of Mahomet as well as of
Stephenson, and as perseverance won them their battles, may it win me
mine.
Many will consider my prophecy ridiculous, and a multitude of Henry
Herberts will foam at the mouth. Protean ignorance is against me—a
resilient Everest of oiled rubber. A hundred years ago it was
boisterously hostile to novelty, to-day it is somnolently apathetic,
and, in this latter mood, it is almost more overpowering than in the
former. Nevertheless, let us smile, let us take off our coats and climb
this glutinous mountain, for the Elysian fields lie beyond.
A few years ago we were told that, once the war was won, this little
island of ours was going to be fit for heroes to live in, as if any
country ever had been or could be an Eldorado after a great war! To-day,
we have well over a million unemployed men and women in this country,
and I have no doubt there are many heroes and heroines amongst them;
certainly the conditions demand an heroic race to win through.
Our present difficulties all boil down to one recognizable sediment.
Great Britain is over-populated. Before the war we were over-populated,
and to-day we are still more so, and to-morrow matters are likely to be
worse.[1] There are three solutions to this problem. Either we must stop
breeding, or we must create new home industries and so absorb our
surplus population, or we must transport it to less thickly populated
areas overseas.
Footnote 1:
In 1913, 700,000 emigrated from this country; in 1923, only 463,000
left.
Six hundred and odd politicians in Westminster, some in black ties and
others in red, chatter like a wilderness of monkeys, whilst those who
were proclaimed heroes may consider themselves lucky if they are allowed
to stand in the gutter and sell bootlaces; and in this chatter the
problem is drowned, only to bob up again, between each breath.
We are told that the Government’s determination is “not to tolerate
propaganda for birth control in clinics and maternity centres supported
by public funds.” This settles the first solution, at least the
Government does not believe in it. Recently, because the coal mining
industry was unable to pay its way, it is now subsidized, and many new
industries are left unprotected, so the second solution joins the first.
As regards the third solution, very little has been done outside private
effort, because the problem has been tackled from the wrong end.
Attempts are persistently being made to shift the unemployed; who wants
them? In place attempts should be made to shift the employed, but this
question I will examine a little later on.
The point I want the reader, however, to realize is that, as the riddle
of the Gordian knot was _not_ solved by cutting it, so the problem of
over-population will not be solved by the dole. Cutting and doling can
be done by any fool with his coat on, they are too easy; for the problem
which faces us demands that we take our coats off and get to work, in
place of turning our less fortunate fellow citizens into unemployable
vagrants.