CHAPTER VI

_Of the Addition made during the last Hundred Years

by Ability to the Product of the National Labour.

This Increment the Product of Ability._

[Sidenote ◆1 Let us now turn to the history of production in this

country during the past hundred years;]

◆¹ I have already said something—but in very general terms—of what,

at the close of the last century, the wealth of this country was.

Let us now consider the subject a little more in detail, though we

need not trouble ourselves with a great many facts and figures. The

comparatively backward state of Ireland makes it easier to deal with

Great Britain only; and the income of Great Britain was then, as I have

said already, about _a hundred and forty million pounds_ annually.

This amount was, as has been said already, also produced by Land,

Capital, and Human Exertion, or, as we are now able to put it, by Land,

Labour, Capital, and Ability; and according to the principles which I

have already carefully explained, had the statistics of industry been

recorded as fully as they are now, we should be able to assign to each

cause a definite proportion of the product. Of what the Land produced,

as distinct from the three other causes, we are indeed able to speak

with sufficient accuracy as it is. It was practically the amount taken

in rent; and the amount taken in rent was about _twenty-five million

pounds_, or something between a fifth and sixth of the total. But the

proportion produced respectively by Labour, Capital, and Ability cannot

be determined with the same ease or exactness. There are, however,

connected with this question, a number of well-known and highly

significant facts, to a few of which I will call the reader’s attention.

[Sidenote ◆1 And consider the enormous increase both in

agricultural production,]

◆¹ Between the years 1750 and 1800, the population of Great Britain

increased by barely so much as twenty-five per cent. It rose from about

eight millions to about ten. Now during that period the number of hands

employed in manufactures increased proportionally far faster than the

total population. The cotton-spinners, for instance, increased from

_forty_ to _eighty thousand_.[32] Such being the case, it is of course

evident that the increase of agricultural labourers cannot have been

very great. It can hardly have been, at the utmost, so much as eighteen

per cent.[33] And now let us glance at the history of agricultural

products, as indicated by a few typical facts. In the year 1688, the

number of sheep in Great Britain was estimated at _twelve millions_.

In the year 1774, the number was estimated at almost the same figure;

but between the years 1774 and 1800, this _twelve millions_ had risen

to _twenty millions_. During the same twenty-six years, the number of

cattle had increased in almost the same proportion. That is to say,

live-stock had increased by seventy-five per cent. Between the years

1750 and 1780 there was an average annual increase in agricultural

capital of _seven million three hundred thousand pounds_. But from

the years 1780 and 1800 there was an average annual increase of

_twenty-six million pounds_; whilst between the years 1750 and 1800

the farmer’s income had very nearly doubled,[34] and the total products

of agriculture had increased sixty per cent.

[Sidenote ◆1 And in manufactures,]

[Sidenote ◆2 That had recently taken place at the close of the

last century.]

◆¹ And now let us turn to manufactures. These, as a whole, had advanced

more slowly; but the advance of certain of them had been yet more

rapid and striking. It will be enough to mention two: the manufacture

of cotton, to which I have called attention already; and an industry

yet more important—the manufacture of iron. ◆² The amount of pig-iron

produced annually in Great Britain during the earlier part of the last

century was not more than _twenty thousand tons_;[35] at the close of

the century it was more than _a hundred and eighty thousand_. What may

have been the increase in the amount of labour employed, cannot be said

with certainty; but it cannot have been comparable to the increase of

the product, which was, as we have just seen, eight hundred per cent;

and it may again be mentioned that one single set of inventions, in the

course of eight years, nearly doubled the product of each individual

smelting furnace.[36] As to the cotton industry, our information is

more complete. The amount of labour was doubled in forty years. The

product was increased fifteen-fold in twenty-five.

[Sidenote ◆1 We shall see how obviously a part at least of this

increase must have been due to Ability and Capital.]

[Sidenote ◆2 And that Labour cannot really have produced the

whole.]

◆¹ My present aim, however, is to make no exact calculation respecting

the extent to which production, taken as a whole, had during the

period in question outstripped the increase of Labour; but merely to

show the reader that the extent was very large; and that, according

to the principles explained already, it was due altogether to the

operation of Capital and Ability—or, to speak more exactly, of Ability

operating through Capital. The truth of this statement with regard

to the increase of manufactures has been shown and illustrated by

the instance of Arkwright and the cotton industry. It will be well

to mention at this point several analogous instances taken from the

history of agriculture. ◆² Elkington, who inaugurated a new system

of drainage, will supply us with one. One still more remarkable is

supplied by Bakewell, who may be said to have played in practical life

a part resembling that which Darwin has played in speculation. He

discovered the method of improving the breeds of sheep and cattle by

a system of selection and crossing that was not before known; and it

was owing to the ability of this one man that “the breed of animals in

England,” as Mr. Lecky points out, “was probably more improved in the

course of a single fifty years than in all the recorded centuries that

preceded it.” The close connection of such improvements with Capital

is the constant theme of Arthur Young, though he was not consciously

anything of a political economist, nor did he attempt to express his

opinion in scientific language. But a still more effective witness is

a distinguished modern Radical, Professor Thorold Rogers, who, though

always ready, and, as many people would say, eager to espouse the

side of Labour as against Capital and Ability,—especially when the

two last belonged to the landed class—is yet compelled to assert as

emphatically as Young himself, that the Ability and the Capital of

this very class were in the last century “the pioneers of agricultural

progress”—a progress which he illustrates by these picturesque

examples: that it raised the average weight of the fatted ox from 400

lbs. to 1200 lbs., and increased the weight of the average fleece

fourfold.

[Sidenote ◆1 Therefore it is plain that Labour would not have

created the whole of the national income a hundred years

ago. But for argument’s sake we will concede that it

produced the whole.]

◆¹ It will therefore be apparent to every reader, that of the income of

Great Britain at the close of the last century, Ability and Capital, as

distinct from Labour, created a considerable part, though we need not

determine what part. Accordingly, since the income of Great Britain,

with a population of _ten millions_, was at that time about _a hundred

and forty million pounds_, or _fourteen pounds_ per head,[37] it is

evident that the Labour of a population of _ten millions_ was quite

incapable, a hundred years ago, of producing by itself as much as

_fourteen pounds_ per head.[38] I will, however, merely for the sake of

argument, and of keeping a calculation I am about to make far within

the limits which strict truth would warrant, make a preposterous

concession to any possible objector. I will concede that Labour by

itself produced the entire value in question, and that Ability, as

distinct from Labour, had nothing at all to do with it. I will concede

that the faculties which produced the machines of Arkwright, which

had already turned steam into an infant Hercules of industry, and

was pouring into this island the wealth of the farthest Indies, were

faculties of the same order as those which were possessed by any

waggoner who had driven the same waggon along the same ruts for a

lifetime. And I will now proceed to the calculation I spoke of. I shall

state it first, and establish its truth afterwards.

[Sidenote ◆1 The whole income of Great Britain at that time was _a

hundred and forty million pounds_, and the population

_ten millions_. Hence, as will be shown in the next

Book, we get an indication of the utmost that Labour

alone can produce. Now, a population of _ten millions_

at present produces _three hundred and fifty millions_

annually.]

◆¹ It will be seen, from what has just been said, that a hundred

years ago the utmost that Labour could produce in the most advanced

country of Europe was _a hundred and forty million pounds_ annually

for a population of _ten millions_, or—let me repeat—_fourteen pounds_

per head. The production per head is now _thirty-five pounds_; or, for

each ten millions of population, _three hundred and fifty millions_.

The point on which presently I shall insist at length is this: that

if Labour is to be credited with producing the whole of the smaller

sum, the entire difference between the smaller sum and the larger is

to be credited to Ability operating on industry through Capital. That

is to say, for every _three hundred and fifty millions_ of our present

national income, Labour produces only _a hundred and forty millions_

whilst Ability and Capital produce _two hundred and ten_. But the

fact may be put yet more clearly than this. Of our present national

income of _thirteen hundred millions_, Labour produces about _five

hundred_, whilst Ability and Capital produce about _eight hundred_.

It could indeed be shown, as I just now indicated, that Labour in

reality produces less than this, and Ability and Capital more; but for

argument’s sake we will let the calculation stand thus, in order that

Labour shall be at all events credited with not less than its due.

[Sidenote ◆1 And it will accordingly be shown in the next Book

that the whole of this increment is produced by Ability,

and not by Labour.]

◆¹ And now as to Capital and Ability, and the _eight hundred millions_

produced by them, what has just been said can be put in a simpler way.

Capital is not only the material means through which Ability acts on

and assists Labour, but it is a material means which Ability has itself

created. So long as Labour alone was the principal productive agent,

those vast accumulations which are distinctive of the modern world were

unknown and impossible. Professor Thorold Rogers has pointed out how

small was the Capital of this country at so late a date as the close of

the seventeenth century. Labour alone was unable to supply a surplus

from which any such accumulation as we now call Capital could be taken.

These became possible only by the increasing action of Ability. They

were taken from the products which Ability added to the products of

Labour, Capital therefore _is_ Ability in a double sense—not only

in the sense that as a productive agent it represents Ability, but

in the sense that Ability has created it. We may therefore for the

present leave Capital entirely out of our discussion, regarding it as

comprehended under the term and the idea of Ability; although when we

come to consider the question of distribution, we shall have to take

account of the distinction between the two. But for the present we are

concerned with the problem of production only; and in dealing with that

part of it which alone is now before us, we have to do only with two,

and not three forces—not with Labour, Ability, and Capital, but with

Labour and Ability only.

The calculation, therefore, which was put forward just now may be

expressed in yet simpler terms. Of our present national income of

_thirteen hundred millions_, Labour produces _five hundred millions_

and Ability _eight hundred_. And now comes another point which yet

remains to be mentioned. When we speak of Labour, we mean not an

abstract quality: what we mean is labouring men. Similarly, when we

talk of Ability, we do not mean an abstract quality either: we mean

men who possess and exercise it. But whereas when we talk of Labour

we mean an immense number of men, when we talk of Ability—as I shall

show presently—we mean a number that by comparison is extremely small.

The real fact then on which I am here insisting, and which I shall

now proceed to substantiate and explain further, is that, whilst the

immense majority of the population of this country produce little more

than one-third of the income, a body of men who are comparatively a

mere handful actually produce little less than two-thirds of it.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

BOOK III

AN EXPOSURE OF THE CONFUSIONS IMPLIED IN SOCIALISTIC

THOUGHT AS TO THE MAIN AGENT IN MODERN PRODUCTION

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

CHAPTER I

_The Confusion of Thought involved in the Socialistic

Conception of Labour._

[Sidenote ◆1 After what has now been said, every one will admit

that Ability, as distinct from Labour, is as truly a

productive agent as Labour is.]

[Sidenote ◆2 But Socialists, even if they admit this fact, by

their inaccurate thought and language obscure the

meaning of the fact;]

◆¹ There is one point which now must be quite plain to every reader,

and on which there is no need to insist further; namely, that Ability

is as truly a productive agent as Labour, and that if Labour produces

any part of contemporary wealth, Ability just as truly produces another

part. This proposition, when put in a general way, will, after what

has been said, not be disputed by anybody; but there are various

arguments which readers of socialistic sympathies will probably invoke

as disproving it in the particular form just given to it. Certain of

these arguments require to be discussed at length; but the rest can be

disposed off quickly, and we will get them out of the way first. ◆²

They are, indeed, not so much arguments as confusions of thought, due

largely to an inaccurate use of language.

These confusions are practically all comprehended in the common

socialistic formula which declares all production, under modern

conditions, to be what Socialists call “socialised.” By this is meant

that the whole wealth of the community is produced by the joint

action of all the classes of men and of all the faculties employed

in its production; and the formula thus includes, as Socialists will

be careful to tell us, all those faculties which are here described

as Ability. Now such a doctrine, if we consider its superficial

sense merely, is so far from being untrue that it is a truism. But

if we consider what it implies, if we consider the only meaning

which gives it force as a socialistic argument, or indeed invests it

with the character of any argument at all, we shall find it to be a

collection of fallacies for which the truism is only a cloak. For the

implied meaning is not the mere barren statement that the exertions

of all contribute to the joint result, but that the exertions of all

contribute to it in an equal degree; the further implication being that

all therefore should share alike in it.

[Sidenote ◆1 Making use of the same fallacy as that of Mill, which

has been already criticised.]

◆¹ This is really Mill’s argument with respect to Land and Labour, put

into different language and applied to Labour and Ability. It says in

effect precisely what was said by Mill, that when two causes are both

necessary to producing a given result, it is absurd to say that the one

produces more or less of it than the other: only here the argument can

be used with greater apparent force. For the Socialists may say that

if the principle which has been explained in this book is admitted,

and if Ability is held to produce all that part of the product which

is over and above what Labour could produce by itself, Labour, by the

same reasoning, could be proved to produce the whole of the product,

since, without the assistance of Labour, Ability could produce nothing.

Accordingly, they will go on to say, this conclusion being absurd,

the reasoning which leads to it must be false, and we must fall back

again on the principle set forth by Mill. Labour and Ability are both

necessary to the result, and being equally necessary must be held to

contribute equally to producing it.

This argument, as I have said, has great apparent force; but again we

have a plausibility which is altogether upon the surface. If Labour

and Ability were here conceived of as faculties, without regard to

the number of men possessing them, the argument would, whatever its

logical value, coincide broadly with one great practical fact, to which

by and by I shall call the reader’s attention; namely, that Labour

and Ability do in this country divide between them the joint product

in nearly equal portions. But those who make use of the socialistic

formula use it with a meaning very different from the above. When they

say that Ability and Labour contribute equally to producing a given

amount of wealth, they mean not that the men who exercise one faculty

produce collectively as much as the men who exercise the other; for

that might mean that _five hundred men of Ability_ produced as much as

_five hundred thousand labourers_; and that is the very position which

the Socialists desire to combat. They mean something which is the exact

reverse of this: not that one faculty produces as much as the other

faculty, but that one man produces as much as, and no more than another

man, no matter which faculty he exercises in the producing process.

They mean not that the faculty of Labour which an ordinary ploughman

represents, produces as much as the faculty represented by an Arkwright

or by a Stevenson, but that the individual ploughman, by the single

task which he himself performs, adds as much to his country’s wealth as

the creators of the spinning-frame and the locomotive.

[Sidenote ◆1 Their meaning needs only to be clearly stated to show

its absurdity.]

◆¹ As soon as we realise that this is what the argument means, its

apparent plausibility turns into a sort of absurdity which common sense

rejects, even before seeing why it does so. We will not, however, be

content with dismissing the argument as absurd: there is an idea at the

back of it which requires and deserves to be examined. It is an idea

which rests upon the fact already alluded to, that though Ability can

make nothing without Labour, Labour can make something without Ability;

and that thus the labourers who work under the direction of an able man

each contribute a kind of exertion more essential to the result than

he does. Each can say to him, “I am something without you. You, on the

contrary, are nothing without me.” Thus there arises a more or less

conscious idea of Labour as a force which, if only properly organised,

will be able at any moment, by refusing to exert itself, to render

Ability helpless, and so bring it to terms and become its master,

instead of being, as now, its servant.

[Sidenote ◆1 But in it there is, indeed, a plausible view as to

Labour, which must be refuted, not only ridiculed.

According to this view, Labour can always bring Ability

to terms by refusing to exert itself.]

[Sidenote ◆2 But Labour cannot refuse to exert itself for long,

and never except with the assistance of Capital.]

[Sidenote ◆3 Nature, not the men of ability, forces the majority

of men to Labour.]

◆¹ But this idea, which is suggested, and seems to be supported, by the

modern development of labour-organisation and strikes, really ignores

the most fundamental facts of the case. In the first place, it may

be observed that though Ability, regarded as a faculty, is no doubt

helpless unless there is Labour for it to act upon, Ability, if we

take it to mean the men possessing the faculty, is, whatever happens,

in as good a position as Labour; for the average man of ability can

always become a labourer. But the principal point to realise is far

more important than this. We are perfectly right in saying, as was said

just now, that if Labour should refuse to exert itself, Ability could

produce nothing; but it seems completely to escape the notice of those

who use this argument that to refuse to exert itself is what Labour

can never do, except for very short times, and to a quite unimportant

extent; and it can only do thus much when Ability indirectly helps it.

The ideas of the power of Labour which are suggested by the phenomenon

of the strike are, as I shall by and by show more fully, curiously

fallacious. ◆² Men can strike—that is to say, cease to labour—only when

they have some store on which to live when they are idle; and such a

store is nothing but so much Capital. A strike, therefore, represents

the power not of Labour, but of Capital.[39] The Capital which is

available in the present day for supporting strikes would never have

been in existence but for the past action of Ability; and what is

still more important, a widespread strike would very quickly exhaust

it. Further, a strike, no matter what Capital were at the back of it,

could never be more than partial for even a single day; for there are

many kinds of Labour, such as transport and distribution of food, the

constant performance of which is required by even the humblest lives.

But it is not necessary to dwell on such small matters as these. It

is enough to point to the fact, which does not require proving—the

broad fact that men, taken as a whole, can no more refuse to labour

than they can refuse to breathe. ◆³ What compels them to labour is

not the employing class, but Nature. The employing class—the men of

ability—merely compel them to labour in a special way.

[Sidenote ◆1 But Nature forces no one to exert Ability; therefore

Ability is, in the long run, in a stronger position than

Labour.]

But Ability itself stands on an entirely different footing. Whereas

Labour, as a whole, cannot cease to exert itself, Ability can. Indeed,

for long periods of history it has hardly exerted itself at all; whilst

its full industrial power, as we know it now, only began to be felt a

century and a half ago. Labour, in other words, represents a necessary

kind of exertion, which can always be counted on as we count on some

force of Nature: Ability represents a voluntary kind of exertion,

which can only be induced to manifest itself under certain special

circumstances. Accordingly, ◆¹ whilst Labour can make no terms with

Nature, Ability in the long run can always make terms with Labour. It

will thus be seen that the set of arguments founded on the conception

of Labour as stronger than Ability, because more necessary, are

arguments founded on a complete misconception of facts. I speak of them

as arguments; but they hardly deserve the name. Rather they are vague

ideas that float in the minds of many people, and suggest beliefs or

opinions to which they can give no logical basis. At all events, after

what has been said, we may dismiss them from our thoughts, and turn to

another fallacy that lurks in the socialistic formula.

[Sidenote ◆1 Let us now test the socialistic view by examples:]

[Sidenote ◆2 By the case of an organist and the man who blows the

bellows;]

[Sidenote ◆3 Or of a great painter and the man who stretches his

canvas.]

◆¹ I said of that formula that, the moment its meaning was realised,

it struck the mind as an absurdity, even before the mind knew why. Let

us now apply it to two simple cases, which will show its absurdity in

a yet more striking manner. ◆² There is an old story commonly told of

Handel. The great composer had been playing some magnificent piece

of music on the organ; and as soon as the last vibration of inspired

sound had subsided, he was greeted by the voice of the man who blew

the bellows, saying, “I think that we two played that beautifully.”

“_We!_” exclaimed Handel. “What had you to do with it?” He turned

again to the keys, and struck them, but not a note came. “Ha!” said

the bellows-blower, “what have I to do with it? Admit that I have as

much to do with it as you have, or I will not give you the power to

sound a single chord.” The whole point of this story lies in the fact

that the argument of the bellows-blower, though possessed of a certain

plausibility, is at the same time obviously absurd. But according to

the principles of the Socialists, it is absolutely and entirely true.

It exhibits those principles applied in the most perfect way. ◆³ With

just the same force, it may be said about a great picture by the man

who has woven the canvas, or tacked it to its wooden frame. This man

may, according to the socialistic theory of production, call the

picture the socialised product of the great painter and himself, and,

though no more able to draw than a child of four years old, may put

himself on a level with a Millais or an Alma Tadema. To the production

of the result the canvas is as necessary as the painter.

[Sidenote ◆1 The socialistic view of production would be true only

were a certain fact of life quite different to what it

is.]

The nature of the fallacy which leads us to such conclusions as these

is revealed almost instantly by the light such conclusions throw on it.

It consists in ignoring the fact that whilst anybody, not a cripple

or idiot, can blow the bellows of an organ, or stretch the canvas for

a picture, only one man in a million can make music like Handel, or

cover the canvas with pictures like Millais or Alma Tadema. The nature

of the situation will be understood most accurately if we imagine the

bellows-blower at the key-board of the organ, and the canvas-stretcher

with the painter’s brushes. The one, no doubt, could elicit a large

volume of sound; the other could cover the canvas with daubs of

unmeaning colour. These men, then, when they work for the artists of

whom we speak, may very properly be credited with a share in as much

of the result as would have been produced if they had been in the

artists’ places. That is to say, to the production of mere sound the

bellows-blower may be held to contribute as much as the great musician;

and the canvas-stretcher as much as the painter to the mere laying on

of colour. But all the difference between an unmeaning discord and

music, all the difference between an unmeaning daub and a picture, is

due to qualities that are possessed by no one except the musician and

the painter.[40] ◆¹ The socialistic theory of production would be true

only on the supposition that the faculties employed in production were

all equally common, and that everybody is equally capable of exertion

of every grade. Now is this supposition true, or is it not true? A

moment ago I spoke of it, assuming it to be obviously false; and many

people will think it is hardly worth discussion. That, however, is far

from being the case. It is a supposition which, as we have seen, lies

at the very root of Socialism: the question it involves is a broad

question of fact; and it is necessary, by an appeal to fact, to show

that it is as false as I have assumed it to be.

[Sidenote ◆1 The great feature in modern production is the

progress in the productivity of the same number of men.]

◆¹ Let me once again, then, state the great proposition which I am

anxious to put beyond the reach of all denial or misconception. A

given number of people, a hundred years ago, produced yearly in this

country _a hundred and forty million pounds_. The same number of

people to-day produce two and a half times as much. Labour, a hundred

years ago, could not have produced more than the total product of the

community—that is to say, _a hundred and forty million pounds_; and, if

it produced that then, it produces no more now. The whole added product

is produced by the action of Ability. The proposition is a double one.

Let us take the two parts in order.

[Sidenote ◆1 History shows us that Labour is not progressive,

except within very narrow limits that were reached long

ago, or, at all events, by the end of the last century.]

◆¹ I have already here and there pointed out in passing how certain

special advances in the productive powers of the community were due

demonstrably to Ability, not to Labour; but I have waited till our

argument had arrived at its present stage to insist on the general

truth that, except within very narrow limits, Labour is, in its very

nature, not progressive at all. If we cast our eyes backwards as far

into the remote past as any records or relics of human existence will

carry us, we can indeed discern three steps in industrial progress,

which we may, if we please, attribute to the self-development of

Labour—the use of stone, the use of bronze, and the use of iron. But

these steps followed each other slowly, and at immeasurable intervals;

and though the last was taken in the early morning of history, yet

Labour even then had, in certain respects, reached for thousands

of years an efficiency which it has never since surpassed. In the

lake-dwellings of Switzerland, which belong to the age of stone,

objects have been found which bear witness to a manual skill equal to

that of the most dexterous workmen of to-day. No labour, again, is

more delicate than that of engraving gems; and yet the work of the

finest modern gem-engravers is outdone by that of the ancient Greeks

and Romans. It was even found, when the unburied ship of a Viking was

being reproduced for the International Exhibition at Chicago, that

in point of mere workmanship, with all our modern appliances, it was

impossible to make the copy any better than the original; whilst, if

we institute a comparison with times nearer our own—especially if we

come to the close of the last century—it is hardly necessary to say

that in every operation which depended on training of eye and hand, the

great-grandfathers of the present generation were the equals of their

great-grandsons.

[Sidenote ◆1 Let us then compare the workers of that period with

their great-grandsons of to-day.]

◆¹ We will therefore content ourselves with comparing the labourers of

to-day with the labourers of the days of Pitt; and with regard to those

two sets of men, we may safely say this, that in whatever respect the

latter seem able to do more than the former, their seemingly increased

power can be definitely and distinctly traced to some source outside

themselves, from which it has been taken and lent to them—in other

words, to the ability of some one able man, or else to the joint action

of a body of able men. A single illustration is sufficient to prove

this. It consists of a fact to which I have alluded in general terms

already. It is as follows:—

[Sidenote ◆1 We shall see that in Labour itself there has been

no progress whatsoever. Ability has been the sole

progressive agent.]

When Watt had perfected his steam-engine in structure, design, and

principle, and was able to make a model which was triumphantly

successful in its working, he encountered an obstacle of which

few people are aware, and which, had it not been overcome, would

have made the development of steam-power, as we know it now, an

utter impossibility. It was indeed, in the opinion of the engineer

Smeaton, fatal to the success of Watt’s steam-engine altogether.

This obstacle was the difficulty of making cylinders, of any useful

size, sufficiently true to keep the pistons steam-tight. Watt, with

indomitable perseverance, endeavoured to train men to the degree of

accuracy required, by setting them to work at cylinders, and at nothing

else; and by inducing fathers to bring up their sons with them in the

workshop, and thus from their earliest youth habituate them to this

single task. By this means, in time, a band of labourers was secured

in whom skill was raised to the highest point of which it is capable.

◆¹ But not even all the skill of those carefully-trained men—men

trained by the greatest mechanical genius of the modern world—was equal

to making cylinders approaching the standard of accuracy which was

necessary to render the steam-engine, as we now know it, a possibility.

But what the Labour of the cleverest labourer could never be brought

to accomplish, was instantly and with ease accomplished by the action

of Ability. Henry Maudslay, by introducing the slide-rest, did at a

single stroke for all the mechanics in the country what Watt, after

years of effort, was unable to do for any of them. The Ability of

Maudslay, congealed in this beautiful instrument, took the tool out of

the hands of Labour at the turning-lathe, and held it to the surface

of the cylinder, whilst Labour looked on and watched. With this iron

“mate” lent to him,—this child of an alien brain,—the average mechanic

was enabled to accomplish wonders which no mechanic in the world by his

own skill could approach. The power of one man descended at once on a

thousand workshops, and sat on each of the labourers like the fire of

an industrial Pentecost; and their own personal efficiency, which was

the slowly-matured product of centuries, was, by a power acting outside

themselves, increased a hundredfold in the course of a few years.

[Sidenote ◆1 There is, however, a plausible objection to this view

which we must consider.]

◆¹ Illustrations of this kind might be multiplied without limit; but

nothing could add to the force of the one just given, or show more

clearly how the productivity of Labour is fixed, and the power of

Ability, and of Ability alone, is progressive. There is, however, a

very important argument which objectors may use here with so much

apparent force that, although it is entirely fallacious, it requires to

be considered carefully.

CHAPTER II

_That the Ability which at any given period is a

Producing Agent, is a Faculty residing in

and belonging to living Men._

It may amuse the reader to hear this argument stated—forcibly, if not

very fully—by an American Socialist, in an anonymous letter to myself.

I had published an article in _The North American Review_, giving a

short summary of what I have said in the preceding chapters with regard

to the part played by Ability in production; and the letter which I

will now give was sent me as a criticism on this:

[Sidenote ◆1 The objection is thus put by an American Socialist:

that it is absurd to say that primæval inventors, such

as the inventor of the plough, are still producing

wealth by their ability; and if absurd in this case,

then in all cases.]

◆¹ Sir—Your article in the current number of _The North American

Review_ on “Who are the Chief Wealth Producers?” in my judgment is

the crowning absurdity of the various effusions that parade under the

self-assumed title of political economy. In the vulgar parlance of

some newspapers, it is hog-wash. It is utterly senseless, and wholly

absurd and worthless. You propose to publish a book in which you will

elaborate your theory. Well, if the book has a large sale, it will

not be because the author has any ability as a writer on economical

subjects, but rather that the buyers are either dupes or fools. All

the increase in wealth that has resulted by reason of men using

ploughs was produced by the man who invented the plough—eh? The total

amount of the wealth produced by men by reason of their using certain

appliances in the form of tools or machines is produced by the man

who invented the tool or machine—eh? perhaps some one in Egypt

thousands of years ago? Such stuff is not only worthless hog-wash: it

is nauseating, is worthy of the inmate of Bedlam.

[Sidenote ◆1 To this there are two answers. The first is that the

simpler inventions are probably due, not to Ability at

all, but to the common experience of the average man;]

[Sidenote ◆2 And, like Labour itself, they have remained unchanged

up till quite recent times.]

[Sidenote ◆3 But even if invented by Ability, we should still

attribute the wealth now produced by them to Labour;]

Now the argument implied in this charming letter, so far as it goes, is

sound; and I will put it presently in a more comprehensive form. Its

fault is that it goes a very little way, and does not even approach

the position it is adduced to combat. To say that if one man who lived

thousands of years ago could be shown to be the sole and only inventor

of the plough, then all the increase of wealth that has since been

produced by ploughing ought to be credited to the Ability of this one

man, is practically no doubt as absurd[41] as the writer of the letter

thinks it; and were such the result of the reasoning in this volume,

it would reduce that reasoning to an absurdity. ◆¹ That reasoning,

however, leads to no result of the kind; and it is necessary to explain

to the reader exactly why it fails to do so. It fails to do so because

ploughs, and other implements equally simple, instead of representing

those conditions of production to which alone the reasoning in this

volume applies, represent conditions which are altogether opposed to

them. The plough, or at least such a plough as was in use in ancient

Egypt, is the very type and embodiment of the non-progressive nature of

Labour, as opposed to, and contrasted with, the progressive nature of

Ability. The plough, indeed, in its simplest form, was probably not the

result of Ability at all, but rather of the experience of multitudes

of common men, acting on the intelligence which common men possess;

just as, even more obviously, was the use of a stick to walk with,

or of a flail for thrashing corn. It will perhaps, however, be said

that in that case, according to the definition given by me, the plough

would be the result of Ability all the same, only that it would prove

Ability to be a faculty almost as universal as Labour. And no doubt

it would prove this of Ability of a low kind; indeed, we may admit

that it does prove it. Everybody has a little Ability in him, just as

everybody has a little poetry; but in cases of this kind everything

is a question of degree; and for practical purposes we are compelled

to classify men not according to faculties which, strictly speaking,

they possess, but according to the degree in which they possess them.

Cold, strictly speaking, is merely a low degree of heat; but for all

practical purposes winter is opposed to summer. Similarly, a man who

has just enough poetry in him to be able—as most men can—to scribble

a verse of doggerel, is for all practical purposes opposed to a

Shakespeare or a Dante; and similarly also the man who has just enough

Ability in him to discover the use of a stick, a flail, or a plough,

is for all practical purposes opposed to the men who are capable of

inventing implements of a higher and more complicated order. Nor is the

line which we thus draw drawn arbitrarily. It is a line drawn for us

by the whole industrial history of mankind; ◆² and never was there a

division more striking and more persistent. For the simpler implements

in question, from the first days when they were invented,—“thousands of

years ago,” as my American correspondent says,—remained what they then

were up to the beginning of the modern epoch; and in many countries,

such as India, they remain the same to-day. The simpler industrial

arts, then, and the simpler implements of industry are sharply marked

off from the higher and more complicated by the fact that, whilst

the latter are demonstrably due to individuals, have flourished only

within the area of their influence, and have constituted a sudden and

distinct advance on the former, the former have apparently been due

to the average faculties of mankind, and have remained practically

unchanged from the days of their first discovery. Accordingly, the

distinction between the two being so marked and enormous, the faculties

to which they are respectively due, even if differing only in degree,

yet differ in degree so much that they are for practical purposes

different faculties, and must be called by different names. ◆³ The

simple inventions, then, to which my correspondent refers, together

with the wealth produced by them, are to be credited to Labour, the

non-progressive character of which they embody and represent, and

have nothing to do with that Ability which is the cause of industrial

progress.

My correspondent’s letter, however, whether he saw it himself or

not, really raises a point far more important than this. For even

if the invention of the plough had been the work of one man only,

if it had involved as much knowledge and genius as the invention of

the steam-engine, and if, but for this one man, ploughs would never

have existed, yet to attribute to the Ability of this one man all the

wealth that has been subsequently produced by ploughing would still be

practically as absurd as my correspondent implies it would be.

[Sidenote ◆1 Because the commonest labourer, when once he has seen

them, can make and use them.]

◆¹ Now why is this? The reason why is as follows. Although, according

to such an hypothesis, if a plough had not been made by this one able

man, no ploughs would ever have been made by anybody, yet when such a

simple implement has once been made and used, anybody who has seen it

can make and use others like it; so that the Ability of the inventor of

the plough increases the productivity of every labourer who uses it,

not by co-operating with him, but by actually passing into him. Thus,

so far as this particular operation is concerned, the simplest labourer

becomes endowed with all the powers of the inventor; and the inventor

thenceforward is, in no practical sense, the producer of the increased

product of what he has enabled the labourer to produce, any more than a

father is the producer of what is produced by his son.

[Sidenote ◆1 But the inventions by which Ability in the modern

world has increased production are the very opposite of

these inventions of earlier days; for they require as

much Ability to use them to the best advantage as they

required to make them.]

And if the productivity of Labour were increased by inventions alone,

and if all inventions were as simple as the primæval plough—if, when

once seen, anybody were able to make them, and, having once made them,

to use them to the utmost advantage—then, though Ability might still

be the sole cause of every fresh addition to the productive powers

of exertion, these added powers would be all made over to Labour, and

be absorbed and appropriated by it, just as Lear’s kingdom was made

over to his daughters; and whatever increased wealth might be produced

thenceforward through their agency would be the true product of Labour,

which had in itself become more effective. ◆¹ But, as a matter of

fact, this is not the case; and it is not so for two reasons. In the

first place, such implements as the primæval plough differ from the

implements on which modern industry depends, in the complexity alike

of their structure, and of the principles involved in it; so that

without the guidance of Ability of many kinds, Labour alone would

be powerless to reproduce them; and, in the second place, as these

implements multiply, not only is Ability more and more necessary

for their manufacture, but is more and more necessary also for the

use of them when manufactured. One of the principal results of the

modern development of machinery, or of the use, by new processes, of

newly discovered powers of Nature, is the increasing division and

subdivision of Labour; so that the labourers, as I have said before,

by the introduction of this mass of machinery, become themselves the

most complicated machine of all, each labourer being a single minute

wheel, and Ability being the framework which alone keeps them in their

places. It may be said, therefore, that each modern invention or

discovery by which the productivity of human exertion is increased has

upon Labour an effect exactly opposite to that which was produced on

it by such inventions as the primæval plough. Instead of making Labour

more efficacious in itself, they make it less and less efficacious,

unless it is assisted by Ability.

[Sidenote ◆1 They do not become, as is vulgarly said, common

property. They belong to those who can use them;]

[Sidenote ◆2 And more and more is living Ability required to

maintain and use the powers left to it by the Ability of

the past.]

◆¹ And here we have the answer to the real argument which lies at the

bottom of my American correspondent’s letter—an argument which, in

some such words as the following, is to be found repeated in every

Socialistic treatise: “When once an invention is made, it becomes

common property.” So it does in a certain theoretical sense; but only

in the sense in which a knowledge of Chinese becomes common property

in England on the publication of a Chinese grammar. For all practical

purposes, such a statement is about as true as to say that because

anybody can buy a book on military tactics, everybody is possessed of

the genius of the Duke of Wellington. ◆² The real truth is, that to

utilise modern inventions, and to maintain the conditions of industry

which these inventions subserve, as much Ability is required as was

required to invent them; though, as I shall have occasion to point out

later on, the Ability is of a different kind.

[Sidenote ◆1 We must, then, here note that when Ability is said to

produce so much of the national income, what is meant is

the Ability of men alive at the time,]

These considerations bring us to another important point, which must

indeed from the beginning have been more or less obvious, but which

must now be stated explicitly. ◆¹ That point is, that when we speak

of Ability as producing at any given time such and such a portion

of the national income, as distinguished from the portion which is

produced by Labour, we are speaking of Ability possessed by living men,

who possess it either in the form of their own superior faculties,

assimilating, utilising, and adding to the inventions and discoveries

of their predecessors; or in the form of inherited Capital, which those

predecessors have produced and left to them. Thus, though dead men

like Arkwright, or Watt, or Stevenson may, in a certain theoretical

sense, be considered as continuing to produce wealth still, they cannot

be considered to do so in any sense that is practical; because they

cannot as individuals put forward any practical claims, or influence

the situation any further by their actions. For all practical purposes,

then, their Ability as a productive force exists only in those living

men who inherit or give effect to its results. Now, of the externalised

or congealed Ability which is inherited in the form of Capital, as

distinguished from the personal Ability by which Capital is utilised,

we need not speak here, though we shall have to do so presently. For

this inherited Capital would not only be useless in production, but

would actually disappear and evaporate like a lump of camphor, if

it were not constantly used, and, in being used, renewed, by that

personal Ability which inherits it, and is inseparable from the living

individual; and, though it will be necessary to consider Capital apart

from this when we come to deal with the problem of distribution,

all that we need consider when we are dealing with the problem of

production is this personal Ability, which alone makes Capital live.

[Sidenote ◆1 Who are practically the monopolists not only of their

own special powers, but of the complicated discoveries

of their predecessors.]

◆¹ So far, then, as modern production is concerned, all the results

of past Ability, instead of becoming the common property of Labour,

become on the whole, with allowance for many exceptions, more and more

strictly the monopoly of living Ability; because these results becoming

more and more complicated, Ability becomes more and more essential to

the power of mastering and of using them. As, however, I shall point

out by and by, in more than one connection, the Ability that masters

and uses them differs much in kind from the Ability that originally

produced them: one difference being that, whereas to invent and perfect

some new machine requires Ability of the highest class in, let us

say, one man, and Ability of the second class in a few other men, his

partners; to use this machine to the best advantage, and control and

maintain the industry which its use has inaugurated or developed, may

require perhaps Ability of only the second class in one man, but will

require Ability of the third and fourth class in a large number of men.

[Sidenote ◆1 And the monopoly of Ability grows stricter at each

fresh stage of progress.]

◆¹ Ability therefore—the Ability of living men—constantly tends, as the

income of the nation grows, to play a larger part in its production,

or to produce a larger part of it; whilst Labour, though without it

no income could be produced at all, tends to produce a part which

is both relatively and absolutely smaller. We assume, for instance,

that the Labour of this country a hundred years ago was capable of

producing the whole of what was the national income then. If it could

by itself, without any Ability to guide it, have succeeded then, when

production was so much simpler, in just producing the yearly amount

in question,—which, as a matter of fact, it could not have done even

then,—the same amount of Labour, without any Ability to guide it, could

certainly not succeed in producing so much now, when all the conditions

of production have become so much more complicated, and when elaborate

organisation is necessary to make almost any effort effective.

[Sidenote ◆1 Thus the argument above quoted against the claims of

Ability, when examined, only throws additional light on

their strength.]

◆¹ Thus the argument, which was fermenting in my American

correspondent’s mind, and which he regarded as reducing the claims of

Ability to “hog-wash,” really affords the means, if examined carefully

and minutely, of establishing yet more firmly the position it was

invoked to shatter, and of making the claims of Ability not only

clearer but more extensive.

CHAPTER III

_That Ability is a natural Monopoly, due to the

congenital Peculiarities of a Minority. The

Fallacies of other Views exposed._

[Sidenote ◆1 But the Socialists have yet another fallacy with

which they will attempt to neutralise the force of what

has just been said.]

[Sidenote ◆2 They will say that Ability is the creation of special

opportunity, and that everybody at birth is potentially

an able man.]

◆¹ But the socialistic theorist will not even yet have been silenced.

Even if he is constrained to admit the truth of all that has just been

said, we shall find that he still possesses in his arsenal of error

another set of arguments by which he will endeavour to do away with its

force. These are generally presented to us in mere loose rhetorical

forms; but however loosely they may be expressed, they contain a

distinct meaning, which I will endeavour to state as completely and

as clearly as is possible. ◆² Put shortly, it is as follows. Though

Ability and Labour may both be productive faculties, and though it may

be allowed that the one is more productive than the other, it is on the

whole a mere matter of social accident—a matter depending on station,

fortune, and education—which faculty is exercised by this or that

individual. Thus, though it may be allowed that a great painter and the

man who stretches his canvas, or an inventor like Watt and the average

mechanic who works for him, do, by the time that both are mature men,

differ enormously in the comparative efficacy of their faculties, yet

the difference is mainly due to circumstances posterior to their birth;

that the circumstances which developed the higher faculties in one

man might equally well have developed them in the other; and that the

circumstances in question, even if only a few can profit by them, are

really created by the joint action of the many.

[Sidenote ◆1 This is sometimes expressed in saying that “the great

man is made by his age,” i.e. by the opportunities

others have secured for him.]

[Sidenote ◆2 But this, though true psychologically, is absolutely

false in the practical sphere of economics.]

The above contention contains several different propositions, which we

will presently examine one by one. We will, however, take its general

meaning first. One of the chief exponents of this, strange as the

fact may seem, is that vehement anti-Socialist, Mr. Herbert Spencer.

Mr. Spencer disposes of the claims of the man of ability as a force

distinct from the generation at large to which he belongs, by saying

that ◆¹ “Before the great man can remake his society, his society

must make him.” Thus, to take an example from art, the genius of a man

like Shakespeare is explained by reference to the condition of the

civilised world, and of England more especially, during the reign of

Queen Elizabeth. The temper of the human mind caused by centuries of

Catholicism, the stir of the human mind shown in the Reformation or the

Renaissance, and the sense of the new world then being conquered in

America, are all dwelt on as general or social causes which produced

in an individual poet a greatness which has been since unequalled. ◆²

Now this reasoning, if used to combat a certain psychological error, no

doubt expresses a very important truth; but if it is transferred to the

sphere of economics its whole meaning vanishes. It was originally used

in opposition to the now obsolete theory according to which a genius

was a kind of spiritual aerolite, fallen from heaven, and related in

no calculable way to its environment. It was used, for instance, to

prove with regard to Shakespeare that had he lived in another age he

would have thought and written differently, and that he might have been

a worse poet under circumstances less exciting to the imagination.

But when we leave the psychological side of the case, and look at its

practical side, a set of facts is forced on us which are of quite a

different order. We are forced to reflect that though Shakespeare’s

mind may have been what it was because the age acted on it, the age was

acting on all Shakespeare’s contemporaries, and yet it produced one

Shakespeare only. If Queen Elizabeth had been told that it was the age

which produced Shakespeare, and in consequence had ordered that three

or four more Shakespeares should be brought to her, her courtiers, do

what they would, would have been unable to find them; and the reason is

plain. The age acts on, or sets its stamp on, the character of every

single mind that belongs to it; but the effect in each case depends

on the mind acted on; and it is only one mind amongst ordinary minds

innumerable, that this universal action can fashion into a great poet.

And what is true of poetic genius is true of industrial Ability.

The great director of Labour is as rare as a great poet is; and

though Ability of lower degrees is far commoner than Ability of the

highest, yet the fact that it is the age which elicits and conditions

its activities does nothing to make it commoner than it would be

otherwise, nor affects the fact that its possessors are relatively

a small minority. For the psychologist, the action of the age is an

all-important consideration; for the economist, it is a consideration

of no importance at all.

But it is by no means my intention to dismiss the Socialistic argument

with this simple demonstration of the irrelevance of its general

meaning. I am going to call the attention of the reader to the

particular meanings that are attached to it, and show how absolutely

false these are, by comparing them with historical facts.

[Sidenote ◆1 Again, Socialists urge that no perfected invention is

the work of a single man, but that many men have always

co-operated to produce it.]

[Sidenote ◆2 This is true; but the class of men referred to is

that very minority who are the monopolists of Ability.

It is this class only, not the community in general.]

◆¹ In the first place, then, the claims of the age, or of society as

a whole, to be the author of industrial progress, in opposition to

the claims of a minority, are supported by many writers on the ground

that no invention or discovery is in reality the work of any single

man. Such writers delight to multiply—and they can do so without

difficulty—instances of how the most important machines or processes

have been perfected only after a long lapse of time, by the efforts

of many men following or co-operating with one another. Thus the

electric telegraph, and the use of gas for lighting, were not the

discoveries of those who first introduced them to the public; and

Stevenson described the locomotive as the “invention of no one man,

but of a race of mechanical engineers.” Further, it is frequently

urged that the same discoveries and inventions are arrived at in

different places, by different minds, simultaneously; and this fact

is put forward as a conclusive proof and illustration of how society,

not the individual, is the true discoverer and inventor. ◆² But these

arguments leave out of sight entirely the fact that, in the first

place, the whole body of individuals spoken of—such as the race of

engineers who produced the locomotive, or the astronomers in different

countries who are discovering the same new star—form a body which

is infinitesimally small itself; and secondly, that even the body

of persons they represent,—namely, all of those who are engaged in

the same pursuits, and have even so much as attempted any step in

industrial progress,—though numerous in comparison with those who have

actually succeeded in taking one, are merely a handful when compared

with society as a whole, and instead of representing society, offer the

strongest contrast to it. The nature of the assistance which Ability

gives to Ability is an interesting question, but it is nothing to the

point here. To prove that progress is the joint product of Ability and

Ability, does not form a proof, but on the contrary a disproof of the

proposition, that it is the joint product of Ability and Labour—or, in

other words, that it is the product of the age, or the entire community.

[Sidenote ◆1 Further, Socialists contend that Ability is the

product of education, and that an equal education would

equalise faculties.]

[Sidenote ◆2 But this wild theory is in absolute opposition to the

most notorious facts;]

◆¹ The socialistic theorist, however, even if he admits the above

answer, will by no means admit that it is fatal to his own position. He

will still take refuge in the proposition already alluded to, that the

Ability of individuals is the child of opportunity, and that Ability

is rarer than Labour, and able men are a minority, only because, under

existing social circumstances, the opportunities which enable it to

develop itself are comparatively few. And if he is pressed to say

what these opportunities are, he will say that they may be described

generally by the one word education. This argument can be answered in

one way only, namely, an appeal to facts; and it is hard to conceive

of anything which facts more conclusively disprove. Indeed, of much

industrial Ability, it can not only be shown to be false, but it is

also, on the very surface of it, absurd. It is plausible as applied

to Ability of one kind only, namely, that of the inventor or the

discoverer; but this, as we shall see presently, is so far from being

Ability as a whole, that it is not even the most important part of it.

Let us, however, suppose it to be the whole for a moment, and ask how

far the actual facts of life warrant us in regarding it as the child

of opportunity and education. Let us first refer to that general kind

of experience which is recorded in the memory of everybody who has

ever been at a school or college, and which, in the lives of tutors

and masters, is repeated every day. Let a hundred individuals from

childhood be brought up in the same school, let them all be devoted

to the study of the same branch of knowledge, let them enjoy to the

fullest what is called “equality of opportunity,” and it will be found

that not only is there no equality in the amount of knowledge they

acquire, but that there is hardly any resemblance in the uses to which

they will be able to put it. Two youths may have worked together in

one laboratory. One will never do more than understand the discoveries

of others. The other will discover, like Columbus, some new world of

mysteries. ◆² Indeed, equality of opportunity, as all experience shows,

instead of tending to make the power of all men equal, does but serve

to exhibit the extent to which they differ.

[Sidenote ◆1 As may be seen by a glance at the lives of some of

the most distinguished inventors of the world.]

◆¹ But particular facts are more forcible than general facts. Let us

consider the men who, as a matter of history, have achieved by their

Ability the greatest discoveries and inventions, and let us see if it

can be said of these men, on the whole, that their Ability has been

due to any exceptional education or opportunity. Speaking generally,

the very reverse is the case. If education means education in the

branch of work or knowledge in which the Ability of the able man is

manifested, the greatest inventors of the present century have had no

advantages of educational opportunity at all. Dr. Smiles observes that

our greatest mechanical inventors did not even have the advantage of

being brought up as engineers. “Watt,” he writes, “was a mathematical

instrument-maker; Arkwright was a barber; Cartwright, the inventor of

the power-loom, was a clergyman; Bell, who afterwards invented the

reaping-machine, was a Scotch minister; Armstrong, the inventor of the

hydraulic engine, was a solicitor; and Wheatstone, inventor of the

electric telegraph, was a maker of musical instruments.” That knowledge

is necessary to mechanical invention is of course a self-evident truth;

and the acquisition of knowledge, however acquired, is education:

education, therefore, was necessary to the exercise of the Ability of

all these men. But the point to observe is, that they had none of them

any special educational opportunity; they were placed at no advantage

as compared with any of their fellows; many of them, indeed, were at

a very marked disadvantage; and though, when opportunity is present,

Ability will no doubt profit by it, the above examples show, and the

whole course of industrial history shows,[42] that Ability is so far

from being the creature of opportunity, that it is, on the contrary,

in most cases the creator of it.

[Sidenote ◆1 The theory is still further refuted by the fact that

moral Ability is a matter of character and temperament,

rather than of intellect.]

[Sidenote ◆2 A business started by Ability of intellect is

maintained by Ability of character.]

◆¹ The mental power, however, which is exercised by the inventor and

discoverer, as I have said, is but one kind of industrial Ability out

of many. Ability—or the faculty by which one man assists the Labour of

an indefinite number of men—consists in what may be called exceptional

gifts of character, quite as much as in exceptional gifts of intellect.

A sagacity, an instinctive quickness in recognising the intellect of

others, a strength of will that sometimes is almost brutal, and will

force a way for a new idea, like a pugilist forcing himself through

a crowd, these are faculties quite as necessary as intellect for

giving effect to what intellect discovers or creates; and they do not

always, or even generally, reside in the same individuals. The genius

which is capable of grappling with ideas and principles, and in the

domain of thought will display the sublimest daring, often goes with

a temperament of such social timidity as to unfit its possessor for

facing and dealing with the world. It is one thing to perfect some

new machine or process, it is another to secure Capital which may

put it into practical operation; and again, if we put the difficulty

of securing Capital out of the question by supposing the inventor

to be a large capitalist himself, there is another difficulty to be

considered, more important far than this—the difficulty dealt with

in the last chapter—namely, the conduct of the business when once

started. Here we come to a number of complicated tasks, in which the

faculty of invention or discovery offers no assistance whatsoever. We

come to tasks which have to do, not with natural principles, but with

men—the thousand tasks of daily and of hourly management. A machine

or process is invented by intellect—there is one step. It is put into

practical operation with the aid of Capital—there is another. When

these two steps are taken, they do not require to be repeated, but the

tasks of management are tasks which never cease; on the contrary, as

has been said already, they tend rather to become ever more numerous

and complicated. ◆² Nor do they consist only of the mere management of

labourers, the selection of foremen and inspectors, and the minutiæ

of industrial discipline. They consist also of what may be called the

policy of the whole business—the quick comprehension of the fluctuating

wants of the consumer, the extent to which these may be led, the

extent to which they must be followed, the constant power of adjusting

the supply of a commodity to the demand. On the importance of these

faculties there is a great deal to be said; but I will only observe

here that it is embodied and exemplified in the fact that successful

inventors and discoverers are nearly always to be found in partnership

with men who are not inventors, but who are critics of inventions, who

understand how to manage and use them, and who supplement the Ability

that consists of gifts of intellect by that other kind of Ability that

consists of gifts of character.

[Sidenote ◆1 Equality of education and opportunity, instead of

equalising characters, displays their differences.]

[Sidenote ◆2 Ability, then, is a natural monopoly; because few

people are born with it.]

Now if, as we have seen, it is entirely contrary to experience to

suppose that inventive Ability is produced by educational opportunity,

much more is it contrary to experience—it is contrary even to common

sense—to suppose that Ability of character can be produced in the same

way. ◆¹ Education, as applied to the rousing and the training of the

intellect, is like a polishing process applied to various stones, which

may give to all of them a certain kind of smoothness, but brings to

light their differences far more than their similarity. Education may

make all of us write equally good grammar, but it will not make all of

us write equally good poetry, any more than cutting and polishing will

turn a pebble into an emerald. And if this is true of education applied

to intellect, of education applied to character it is truer still.

Character consists of such qualities as temperament, strength of will,

imagination, perseverance, courage; ◆² and it is as absurd to expect

that the same course of education will make a hundred boys equally

brave or imaginative, as it is to expect that it will make them equally

tall or heavy, or decorate all of them with hair of the same colour.

[Sidenote ◆1 And now let us again compare its action with that of

the mass of men surrounding it.]

Ability, then, is rare as compared with Labour, not because the

opportunities are rare which are favourable or necessary to its

development, but because the minds and characters are rare which can

turn opportunity to account. ◆¹ And now let us turn again to the more

general form of the Socialistic fallacy—the general proposition that

the Age, or Society, or the Human Race is the true inventor, and let us

test this by a new order of facts.

[Sidenote ◆1 Do able men in any sense represent the tendencies and

intelligence of their average contemporaries? Let

us turn for an answer to the history of the three

chief industrial triumphs of this country: (1) the

iron manufacture, (2) the cotton manufacture, (3) the

steam-engine.]

I have already alluded to the stress laid by Socialists on the fact

that different individuals in different parts of the world often make

the same discoveries at almost the same time; and I pointed out that

whatever this might teach us, applied only to a small minority of

persons, and had no reference whatever to the great mass of the race.

But Socialists very frequently put their view in a form even more

exaggerated than that which I thus criticised. ◆¹ They use language

which implies that the whole mass of society moves forward together

at the same intellectual pace; and that discoverers and inventors

merely occupy the position of persons who chance to be walking a few

paces in advance of the crowd, and who thus light upon new processes

or machines like so many nuggets lying and glittering on the ground,

which those who follow would have presently discovered for themselves;

or, again, they are represented as persons who are merely the first

to utter some word or exclamation which is already on the lips of

everybody. Let us, then, take the three great elements which go to make

up the industrial prosperity of this country—the manufacture of iron,

the manufacture of cotton, and the development of the steam-engine,

and see how far the history of each of these lends any support to the

theory just mentioned.

[Sidenote ◆1 The modern development of the iron industry dependent

on the use of coal in place of wood.]

[Sidenote ◆2 The discovery of how to use coal for this purpose due

to a few individuals, whose labours were either secret,

or bitterly opposed by all who knew of them. Chief

amongst these were]

We will begin with the manufacture of iron. Ever since man was

acquainted with the use of this metal till a time removed from our own

by a few generations only, ◆¹ its production from the ore was dependent

entirely upon wood, which alone of all fuels—so far as knowledge then

went—had the chemical qualities necessary for the process of smelting.

The iron industry in this country was therefore, till very recently,

confined to wooded districts, such as parts of Sussex and Shropshire;

and so large, during the seventeenth century, was the consumption of

trees and brushwood, that the smelting furnace came to be considered by

many statesmen as the destroyer of wood, rather than as the producer

of metal. ◆² This view, indeed, can hardly be called exaggerated; for

by the beginning of the century following the wood available for the

furnaces was becoming so fast exhausted that the industry had begun

to dwindle; and but for one great discovery it would have soon been

altogether extinguished. This was the method of smelting iron with

coal. Now to what cause was this discovery due? The answer can be given

with the utmost completeness and precision. It was due to the Ability

of a few isolated individuals, whose relation to their contemporaries

and to their age we will now briefly glance at.

[Sidenote ◆1 Dud Dudley,]

[Sidenote ◆2 The two Darbys,]

[Sidenote ◆3 Reynolds and the two Craneges, and others;]

◆¹ The first of these was a certain Dud Dudley, who procured a patent

in the year 1620 for smelting iron ore “with coal, in furnaces with

bellows”; and his process was so far successful, that at length from a

single furnace he produced for a time seven tons of iron weekly. For

reasons, however, which will be mentioned presently Dudley’s invention

died with himself; and for fifty years after his death the application

of coal to smelting was as much a lost art as it would have been had he

never lived. ◆² Between the years 1718 and 1735 it was again discovered

by a father and son—the Darbys of Coalbrookdale. A further step,

and one of almost equal importance, ◆³ was achieved by two of their

foremen—brothers of the name of Cranege—assisted by Reynolds, who had

married the younger Darby’s daughter, and this was the application of

coal to the process which succeeds smelting, namely, the conversion of

crude iron into bar-iron, or iron that is malleable. Other inventors

might be mentioned by whom these men were assisted, but it will be

quite enough to consider the case of these. As related to the age, as

related to the society round him, the one thing most striking in the

life of each of them is not that he represented that society, but that

he was in opposition to it, and had to fight a way for his inventions

through neglect, ridicule, and persecution. The nation at large was

absolutely ignorant of the very nature of the objects which these men

had in view; whilst the ironmasters of the day, as a body, though not

equally ignorant, disbelieved that the objects were practicable until

they were actually accomplished. It is true that these great inventors

were not alone in their efforts; for where they succeeded, others

attempted and failed: but these failures do but show in a stronger

light how rare and how great were the faculties which success demanded.

[Sidenote ◆1 The details of whose several lives are signal

illustrations of what has just been said.]

◆¹ Let us take each case separately. Dudley’s life as an ironmaster was

one long succession of persecution at the hands of his brothers in the

trade. They petitioned the king to put a stop to his manufacture; they

incited mobs to destroy his bellows and his furnaces; they harassed him

with law-suits, ruined him with legal expenses; they succeeded at last

in having him imprisoned for debt; and by thus crippling the inventor,

they at last killed his invention. It is true that meanwhile a few

men—a very few—believed in his ideas, and attempted to work them out

independently; and amongst these was Oliver Cromwell himself. He and

certain partners protected themselves with a patent for the purpose,

and actually bought up the works of the ruined Dudley; but all their

attempts ended in utter failure. Two more adventurers, named Copley

and Proger, were successively granted patents during the reign of

Charles II. for this same purpose, and likewise failed ignominiously.

One man alone in the whole nation had proved himself capable of

accomplishing this new conquest for industry; whilst the nation as a

whole, and the masters of the iron trade in particular, remained as

they were—stationary in their old invincible ignorance. The two Darbys,

the two Craneges, and Reynolds, though not encountering, as Dudley did,

the hostility of their contemporaries, yet achieved their work without

the slightest encouragement or assistance from them. The younger Darby,

solitary as Columbus on his quarter-deck, watched all night by his

furnace as he was bringing his process to perfection. His workmen, like

the sailors of Columbus, obeyed their orders blindly; and in hardly a

brain but his own did there exist the smallest consciousness that one

man was laying, in secret, the foundation of his country’s greatness.

With regard to Reynolds and the Craneges, who imitated, though they did

not perfect, the further use of coal for the production of iron that

is malleable, we have similar evidence that is yet more circumstantial.

Reynolds distinctly declares in a letter written to a friend that the

conception of this process was so entirely original with the Craneges

that it had never for a moment occurred to himself as being possible,

and that they had had to convince him that it was so, against his own

judgment. But when once his conversion was completed, he united his

Ability with theirs; and within a very short time the second great step

in our iron industry had been taken triumphantly by these three unaided

men.

Were it necessary, and would space permit of it, we might extend this

history further. We might cite the inventions of Huntsman, of Onions,

of Cort, and Neilson, and show how each of these was conceived, was

perfected, and was brought into practical use, whilst the nation as

a whole remained inert, passive, and ignorant, and the experts of

the trade were hostile, and sometimes equally ignorant. Huntsman

perfected his process in a secrecy as carefully guarded as that of a

mediæval necromancer hiding himself from the vigilance of the Church;

whilst James Neilson, the inventor of the hot-blast, had at first to

encounter the united ridicule and hostility of all the shrewdest and

most experienced iron-masters in the kingdom.

[Sidenote ◆1 The history of the cotton manufacture does so with

equal force;]

◆¹ The history of the cotton manufacture offers precisely similar

evidence. Almost every one of those great improvements made in it, by

which Ability has multiplied the power of Labour, had to be forced

by the able men on the acceptance of adverse contemporaries. Hay was

driven from the country; Hargreaves from his native town; Arkwright’s

mill, near Chorley, was burnt down by a mob; Peel, who used Arkwright’s

machinery, was at one time in danger of his life. Nor was it only

the hostility of the ignorant that the inventors had to encounter.

They had to conquer Capital before they could conquer Labour; for

the Capitalists at the beginning were hardly more friendly to them

than the labourers. The first Capitalists who assisted Arkwright, and

had Ability enough to discover some promise in his invention, had

not enough Ability to see their way through certain difficulties,

and withdrew their help from him at the most critical moment. The

enterprising men who at last became his partners, and with the aid

of whose Capital his invention became successful, represented their

age just as little as Arkwright did. He and they, indeed, had the same

opportunities as the society round them; but they stand contrasted to

the society by the different use they made of them.

[Sidenote ◆1 Also the history of the steam-engine, as a very

curious anecdote will show.]

◆¹ And now, lastly, let us come to the history of the steam-engine.

We need not go over ground we have already trodden, and prove once

more that in this case, as in the others, the age, in the sense of the

majority of the community, had as little to do with the work of the

great inventors as Hannibal had to do with the beheading of Charles I.

It will be enough to insist on the fact that the scientific minority

amongst whom the inventors lived, and who were busied with the same

pursuits, were, as a body, concerned in it just as little. The whole

forward movement, the step after step of discovery by which the

power of steam has become what it now is, was due to individuals—to

a minority of a minority; and this smaller minority was so far from

representing the larger, or from merely marching a few steps ahead of

it, that the large minority always hung back incredulous, till, in

spite of itself, it was converted by the accomplished miracle. One

example is enough to illustrate this. Watt, when he was perfecting

his steam-engine, was in partnership with Dr. Roebuck, who advanced

the money required to patent the invention, and whose energy and

encouragement helped him over many practical difficulties. When the

engine was almost brought to completion, Roebuck found himself so much

embarrassed for money, on account of expense incurred by him in an

entirely different enterprise, that he was forced to sell a large part

of his property; and amongst other things with which he parted was

his interest in Watt’s patent. This he transferred to the celebrated

engineer Boulton; and the patent for that invention which has since

revolutionised the world was valued by Roebuck’s creditors at only one

farthing.

[Sidenote ◆1 The average man, if cross-examined at the Day of

Judgment, would be forced to give his testimony to the

same effect.]

◆¹ These facts speak plainly enough for themselves; and the conscience

of most men will add its own witness to what they teach us—which is

this. So far as industrial progress is concerned, the majority of

mankind are passive. They labour as the conditions into which they are

born compel them to labour; but they do nothing, from their cradle to

their grave, so to alter these conditions that their own labour, or

Labour generally, shall produce larger or improved results. The most

progressive race in the world—or in other words the English race—has

progressed as it has done only because it has produced the largest

minority of men fitted to lead, and has been quickest in obeying their

orders; but apart from these men it has had no appreciable tendency to

move. Let the average Englishman ask himself if this is not absolutely

true. Let him imagine himself arraigned before the Deity at the Day

of Judgment, and the Deity saying this to him: “You found when you

entered the world that a man’s labour on the average produced each year

such and such an amount of wealth. Have you done anything to make the

product of the same labour greater? Have you discovered or applied any

new principle to any branch of industry? Have you guided industry into

any new direction? Have the exertions of any other human being been

made more efficacious owing to your powers of invention, of enterprise,

or of management?” There is not one man in a hundred who, if thus

questioned at the Judgment-seat, would be able, on examining every

thought and deed of his life, to give the Judge any answer but, “No. So

far as I am concerned, the powers of Labour, are as I found them.”

CHAPTER IV

_The Conclusion arrived at in the preceding Book

restated. The Annual Amount produced by Ability

in the United Kingdom._

[Sidenote ◆1 The more, then, that we examine the question, the

more clearly do we see the magnitude of the work

performed by Ability of the few.]

◆¹ In spite, then, of the arguments which Socialists have borrowed

from psychology, and with which, by transferring them to the sphere of

economics, and so depriving them of all practical meaning, they have

contrived to confuse the problem of industrial progress, the facts

of the case, when examined from a practical point of view, stand out

hard and clear and unambiguous. Industrial progress is the work not of

society as a whole but of a small part of it, to the entire exclusion

of the larger part; the reason of this being that the faculties to

which this progress is due—the faculties which I have included under

the name of Industrial Ability—are found to exist only in a small

percentage of individuals, and are practically absent from the minds,

characters, and temperaments of the majority of the human race. Ability

is, in fact, a narrow natural monopoly.

[Sidenote ◆1 But it must not be supposed that Ability is rarer

than it is.]

[Sidenote ◆2 A rough indication of the number of able men in this

country is found in the incomes earned that are above

the average wages of Labour.]

[Sidenote ◆3 The highest Ability very rare. Of all grades of

Ability below the highest, there is always a plentiful

supply.]

◆¹ Ability, however, is of different kinds and grades, some kinds

being far commoner than others; and before summing up what has been

said in this chapter, it will be well to give the reader some more

or less definite idea of the numerical proportion which, judging by

general evidence, the men of Ability bear to the mass of labourers.

Such evidence, not indeed very exact, but still corresponding broadly

to the underlying facts of the case, is to be found in the number of

men paying income-tax on business incomes, as compared with the number

of wage-earners whose incomes escape that tax; in the number of men,

that is, who earn more than _one hundred and fifty pounds_ a year, as

compared with the number of men who do not earn so much. It may seem at

first sight that this division is purely arbitrary; but we shall see,

on consideration, that it is not so. ◆² We shall find that, allowing

for very numerous exceptions, men in this country do as a rule receive

less than _one hundred and fifty pounds_ a year for Labour, and that

when they receive for their exertions a larger income than this they

receive it for the direction of Labour, or for the exercise of some

sort of Ability. Now if we take the males who are over sixteen years

of age, and who are actually engaged in some industrial occupation, we

shall find that those who earn more than _one hundred and fifty pounds_

a year form of the entire number something like six per cent. We may

therefore say that out of every thousand men there are, on an average,

sixty who are distinctly superior to their fellows, who each add more

to the gross amount of the product by directing Labour, than any one

man does by labouring, and who possesses Ability to a greater or less

extent. ◆³ The commoner kinds of Ability, however, depend as a rule

on the higher kinds, and are efficacious only as working under their

direction; and if we continue our estimate on the basis we have just

adopted, and accept the amount that a man makes in industry as being on

the whole an evidence of the amount of his Ability, we consider that,

all allowance being made for mere luck or speculation, a business

income of _fifty thousand pounds_ means, as a rule, Ability of the

first class, of _fifteen thousand pounds_ Ability of the second, and

_five thousand pounds_ Ability of the third, we shall find that men

possessing these higher degrees of the faculty are, in comparison to

the mass of employed males, very few indeed. We shall find that Ability

of the third class is possessed by but one man out of two thousand; of

the second class by but one man out of four thousand; and of the first

class by but one man out of a hundred thousand. This is, as I have

said, a very rough method of calculation, but it is not a random one;

and there is reason to believe that it affords us an approximation to

truth. At all events, taking it as a whole, it does not err by making

Ability too rare; and we shall be certainly within the mark if, taking

Ability as a whole, and waiving the question of its various classes and

their rarity, we say that of the men in this country actively engaged

in production, the men of Ability constitute one-sixteenth.

[Sidenote ◆1 We may now repeat the conclusions arrived at in

the last Book, that Ability produces at _least_

eight-thirteenths of the present income of this country;

and Labour, at the utmost, five-thirteenths.]

And now we are in a position to repeat with more precision and

confidence the conclusion which we reached at the end of the last

chapter. ◆¹ It was there pointed out that of our present national

income, consisting as it does of about _thirteen hundred million

pounds_, Labour demonstrably produced not more than _five hundred

million pounds_, whilst _eight hundred million pounds_ at least was

demonstrably the product of Ability. In the present chapter, I have

substantiated that proposition: I have exposed the confusions and

fallacies which have been used to obscure its truth; I have shown that

Ability and Labour are two distinct forces, in the sense that whilst

the latter represents a faculty common to all men, the possession of

the former is the natural monopoly of the few; that the labourer and

the man of Ability play such different parts in production that a given

amount of wealth is no more their joint product than a picture is the

joint product of a great painter and a canvas-stretcher; and I have

now pointed to some rough indication of the respective numbers of the

men of Ability and of the labourers. Instead, therefore, of contenting

ourselves with the general statement that Ability makes so much of

the national income, and Labour so much, we may say that ninety-six

per cent of the producing classes produce little more than a third

of our present national income, and that a minority, consisting of

one-sixteenth of these classes, produces little less than two-thirds of

it.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

BOOK IV

THE REASONABLE HOPES OF LABOUR — THEIR MAGNITUDE,

AND THEIR BASIS

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

CHAPTER I

_How the Future and Hopes of the Labouring Classes

are bound up with the Prosperity of the Classes

who exercise Ability._

[Sidenote ◆1 The foregoing conclusions not yet complete; but first

let us see the lesson which it teaches us as it stands.]