The two kinds of social reform, one of which might conceivably free
us at last while the other would certainly enslave us forever, are
exhibited in an easy working model in the two efforts that have been
made for the soldiers’ wives--I mean the effort to increase their
allowance and the effort to curtail their alleged drinking. In the
preliminary consideration, at any rate, we must see the second question
as quite detached from our own sympathies on the special subject of
fermented liquor. It could be applied to any other pleasure or ornament
of life; it will be applied to every other pleasure and ornament of life
if the Capitalist campaign can succeed. The argument we know; but
it cannot be too often made clear. An employer, let us say, pays a
seamstress twopence a day, and she does not seem to thrive on it. So
little, perhaps, does she thrive on it that the employer has even some
difficulty in thriving upon her. There are only two things that he can
do, and the distinction between them cuts the whole social and political
world in two. It is a touchstone by which we can--not sometimes, but
always--distinguish economic equality from servile social reform. He can
give the girl some magnificent sum, such as sixpence a day, to do as she
likes with, and trust that her improved health and temper will work for
the benefit of his business. Or he may keep her to the original sum of a
shilling a week, but earmark each of the pennies to be used or not to
be used for a particular purpose. If she must not spend this penny on a
bunch of violets, or that penny on a novelette, or the other penny on
a toy for some baby, it is possible that she will concentrate her
expenditure more upon physical necessities, and so become, from the
employer’s point of view, a more efficient person. Without the trouble
of adding twopence to her wages, he has added twopenny-worth to her
food. In short, she has the holy satisfaction of being worth more
without being paid more.
This Capitalist is an ingenious person, and has many polished
characteristics; but I think the most singular thing about him is his
staggering lack of shame. Neither the hour of death nor the day of
reckoning, neither the tent of exile nor the house of mourning, neither
chivalry nor patriotism, neither womanhood nor widowhood, is safe at
this supreme moment from his dirty little expedient of dieting the
slave. As similar bullies, when they collect the slum rents, put a
foot in the open door, these are always ready to push in a muddy wedge
wherever there is a slit in a sundered household or a crack in a broken
heart. To a man of any manhood nothing can be conceived more loathsome
and sacrilegious than even so much as asking whether a woman who has
given up all she loved to death and the fatherland has or has not shown
some weakness in her seeking for self-comfort. I know not in which of
the two cases I should count myself the baser for inquiring--a case
where the charge was false or a case where it was true. But the
philanthropic employer of the sort I describe is not a man of any
manhood; in a sense he is not a man at all. He shows some consciousness
of the fact when he calls his workers “men” as distinct from masters. He
cannot comprehend the gallantry of costermongers or the delicacy that is
quite common among cabmen. He finds this social reform by half-rations
on the whole to his mercantile profit, and it will be hard to get him to
think of anything else.
But there are people assisting him, people like the Duchess of
Marlborough, who know not their right hand from their left, and to these
we may legitimately address our remonstrance and a resume of some of
the facts they do not know. The Duchess of Marlborough is, I believe,
an American, and this separates her from the problem in a special way,
because the drink question in America is entirely different from the
drink question in England. But I wish the Duchess of Marlborough would
pin up in her private study, side by side with the Declaration of
Independence, a document recording the following simple truths: (1)
Beer, which is largely drunk in public-houses, is not a spirit or a grog
or a cocktail or a drug. It is the common English liquid for quenching
the thirst; it is so still among innumerable gentlemen, and, until very
lately, was so among innumerable ladies. Most of us remember dames of
the last generation whose manners were fit for Versailles, and who drank
ale or Stout as a matter of course. Schoolboys drank ale as a matter of
course, and their schoolmasters gave it to them as a matter of course.
To tell a poor woman that she must not have any until half the day is
over is simply cracked, like telling a dog or a child that he must
not have water. (2) The public-house is not a secret rendezvous of bad
characters. It is the open and obvious place for a certain purpose,
which all men used for that purpose until the rich began to be snobs
and the poor to become slaves. One might as well warn people against
Willesden Junction. (3) Many poor people live in houses where they
cannot, without great preparation, offer hospitality. (4) The climate of
these picturesque islands does not favour conducting long conversations
with one’s oldest friends on an iron seat in the park. (5) Halfpast
eleven a.m. is not early in the day for a woman who gets up before six.
(6) The bodies and minds of these women belong to God and to themselves.