Less than one-half of the breadwinners o_Riches and Poverty (1910)

Cadbury himself. The village is not a private preserve, as is so often

imagined, in which patronized cottagers live a bounty-fed existence, but

a free independent and public-spirited community which rules itself in

matters of detail through a Tenants' Committee or Council. A census of

the inhabitants made in December 1901 gave the following results:—

_Proportion of Bournville Householders working in_

Per Cent.

Bournville 41.2

Birmingham 40.2

King's Norton and Selly Oak (manufacturing

villages within a mile of Bournville) 18.6

-----

100.0

=====

_Occupations of Bournville Householders_

Per Cent.

Factory workers 50.7

Clerks and Travellers 13.3

Mechanics, Carpenters, Bricklayers and others 36.0

-----

100.0

=====

Having this working population of people paying rentals between 5s. 6d.

including rates and 12s. 6d. excluding rates, the rate of infantile

mortality in Bournville in 1903 was only 65 per 1,000 against 331 in the

district of Birmingham known as St Mary's.

The architectural beauty of Bournville has not been secured by

extravagant expenditure, but by tastefully treating good and simple

materials with due regard to utility. Mr W. A. Harvey, the architect,

says: "The idea of a cottage home that I have always endeavoured to keep

in view is one in which beauty is based on utility." There is nothing

tortured, nothing deliberately and queerly "quaint," no plastering of

ornament. The houses look comfortable because they are comfortable. The

windows are pretty because they are simple casements, the best possible

sort of window.

A type of house which particularly pleased me had the following

accommodation:

Ground floor:

Living room, 17 feet by 16 feet with ingle-nook and bay window.

Scullery, 13 feet by 11 feet 3 inches, with bath sunk in floor.

Larder, 5 feet by 4 feet 6 inches. Coal cellar, watercloset, tool shed

and small paved yard. Verandah in front.

First floor:

Bedroom No. 1, 17 feet by 13 feet 6 inches.

Bedroom No. 2, 13 feet by 8 feet.

Attic Bedroom, 10 feet by 8 feet 7 inches.

Linen cupboard.

The total cost, including fencing, laying out garden, etc., was £280.

The house, it will be seen, has no "parlour," but one large living room

measuring 17 feet by 16 feet without the ingle-nook and large square bay

window. It is an exceedingly attractive and comfortable room, and the

sensible idea is appreciated by many of the tenants. The tastes of

others are met by the ordinary arrangement of a separate kitchen and

parlour.

The picturesque and comfortable houses have a charming setting. They are

set back from the road and grouped in such manner as to give each house

the best use of the sun—an important matter often neglected in the

planning of even expensive houses, and absolutely ignored by the

speculative builder. It follows that there are no monotonous roads in

Bournville; natural grouping arises from attention to aspect. Each

cottage has one-eighth to one tenth of an acre of garden. The gardens

are laid out when the houses are built, so that the tenant has not to

begin by breaking up uncultivated land. Lines of fruit trees are

planted, and these, besides yielding a good supply of fruit, form a

pleasant screen between the gardens. As a rule, the tenants take a keen

interest in their gardens, and cultivate them with great success. In

addition to the cottage gardens there are about 100 allotments, which

are eagerly sought after by the inhabitants of the neighbouring

manufacturing villages. There are two gardening classes for young men.

Two professional gardeners with a staff are in charge of the gardening

department, and are always ready to give whatever information and advice

may be required, but each tenant is responsible for the cultivation of

his own garden. It is a notable fact that the gardens are found to

yield, on the average, 1s. 11d. each per week. Gardening is lovingly

fostered by the Village Council already referred to. The members of this

Council, whose services are rendered voluntarily, are elected by ballot,

and the annual elections and by-elections evoke considerable interest.

Through this body arrangements are made for the co-operative purchase of

plants, shrubs, and bulbs in great numbers; gardening tools such as

mowers, rollers or shears, bought for the purpose, are let on hire; a

loan library of gardening books has been formed; also a gardening

association with periodical inspections of gardens; while lectures are

arranged for the winter, and excursions for the summer. Further, the

Council has established and managed with conspicuous success flower

shows and an annual fête for the children. The bath-house and children's

playground are also under its control.

The roads are 42 feet wide, and are all planted with trees. Out of the

100 acres laid out for building 14 acres have been reserved as open

spaces, including parks, green, and children's playgrounds. It is part

of the plan that in no part of the little community should children be

far removed from a proper playground.

I have already referred to the rate of infantile mortality in

Bournville. It may be added that the death-rate for 1904, as certified

by the local Medical Officer of Health, was 6.9 per 1,000. The rate for

Birmingham for the same year was 19.3. In his report for 1900 the

Medical Officer of Health referred to Bournville as follows:—"I have in

my previous reports made mention of the model buildings on the estate

which has been laid out by Mr George Cadbury. I cannot refrain from

again mentioning how much I admire the system he has adopted. The object

of the dwellings has been to give plenty of light and air with a good

deal of air space to each house with sufficient land adjoining, and so

insure a 'breathing lung' for the inhabitants of these houses. The

houses are moreover built on modern principles, and no pains have been

spared to make them as dry and free from insanitary conditions as

possible. In addition, open spaces have been laid out so that at all

times there can never be any danger of increasing the density of the

population over the area on which the buildings have been erected. I

cannot speak too highly of these dwellings, and I can only hope that we

may be able to keep all dwellings as far as possible up to this

standard."

To pass to the all-important financial side of the matter, the balance

sheet for 1909 gives the following results:

BOURNVILLE VILLAGE TRUST INCOME AND EXPENDITURE,

YEAR ENDED DECEMBER 31ST, 1909

Income. Expenditure.

Total rents £9,249 Salaries £1,313

Other incomes 1,042 Office expenses 164

Rates, taxes, etc. 754

Maintenance, repairs

and renewals 1,531

Legal expenses 73

Miscellaneous 143

Maintenance of roads

and open spaces 244

Depreciation on fencing,

etc. 229

------- ------

£10,291 £4,451

======= ======

Balance excess of Income over Expenditure, £5,840.

The whole of this surplus profit is devoted to building new houses and

to buying and developing more land, so that Bournville automatically

increases in size year by year. At the present time it is growing at the

rate of about 50 houses, or say, 250 persons, per annum, and the rate of

increase will, of course, be progressive.

In considering the above figures it must be remembered that the

Bournville Trust in 1900 had the whole estate handed over to it by Mr

Cadbury as an absolute gift. No capital charges had therefore to be met.

I am informed by Mr L. P. Appleton, the building manager, however, that,

with regard to the houses erected by the Trust itself, they all show a

net return of 4 per cent. on the capital, after providing for ground

rent, rates and taxes, repairs, management and all out-goings.[49]

The respective parts played by land and capital in such a scheme should

be carefully noted. If a municipality acquired land at £100 per acre,

and laid out roads and sewers at a cost of £400 per acre, and erected

upon each acre ten houses costing £280 each, the total outlay per acre

would be £3,300, and per house £330. How little a considerable variation

in the cost of land affects the result will be realized from the

following table:

| |Cost of Roads,| |

Cost of Land | Cost of Land |Sewers, etc., | Cost of |Total cost of

per Acre. |per House. 10 | per House | building | each House

| to the Acre. | (£400 per | House. | and its Land.

| | Acre). | |

£ | £ | £ | £ | £

50 | 5 | 40 | 280 | 325

100 | 10 | 40 | 280 | 330

200 | 20 | 40 | 280 | 340

300 | 30 | 40 | 280 | 350

It is not commonly realized by many of those who write on the housing

question that building land is a manufactured article, and that when raw

land is secured housing is as far off as ever unless capital can be

secured to develop it. It would rarely be necessary for a municipality

to pay more than £200 per acre, but whether it paid £20 or £200 the cost

of making roads, sewers, etc., and of erecting the houses would remain

the same. To house all our people on the scale of ten families to the

acre as at Bournville would absorb only 900,000 acres of land, which

could be acquired for quite a moderate sum of money at a small remove

from crowded centres, but the cost of manufacturing the land and of

manufacturing the houses would be great.

Given the provision of healthy houses by a municipality, would they be

appreciated by those for whom they were intended? Here the experience of

Bournville is conclusive. The village has never a house untenanted and

the new houses are eagerly sought after long before they are completed.

There is a constant stream of applications, and this in spite of the

fact that Birmingham is distant four miles. Many of the men cycle to and

from their work in the big city. They do not come to Bournville for

charity rents. They have to pay about the same rentals as in Birmingham.

The difference lies in the substitution of a healthy and lovely home for

a gloomy and uncomfortable tenement.

There is nothing in the Bournville scheme which cannot be effectively

carried out by any municipality. Under the housing acts local

authorities possess the power to acquire land for present or future

building operations, the power to raise loans, and the power to build.

The explanation of their sluggishness in putting the acts into effect is

to be found in the fact we have already noted, viz. that the housing

question is chiefly a capital question. This was slightly recognized by

the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1903 which extended the period

allowed by the 1890 Act for the repayment of loans from 60 years to 80

years.

The vital importance of good housing makes it necessary to do something

to put capital cheaply at the disposal of local authorities for the

purpose. The housing question is a national one, and demands the use of

national capital. Again we touch the matter of ways and means and again

we see the advantage of considering social problems in relation to the

income and accumulated wealth of the country. Year by year, as we have

seen, an enormous amount of capital is wasted. British workmen, denied

proper housing, are paid something less than the value of their product,

while the margin is largely wasted in luxury at home or even sent out of

the country to establish water works in Argentina, supply the sinews of

war to Japan, or employ Chinese Coolies in South African mines. The time

has come when the nation must consider the nature of its resources, and

study its own development. We must see to it that the demand for houses,

the primary demand of a civilized man, is answered, not by the

speculative builder, but by the nation itself.

The proposal here made is a simple one. It is that National Housing

Loans should be raised and the proceeds placed in the hands of a

permanent Housing Board or Commission which should be empowered to

guide, assist and if necessary stimulate local authorities to rehouse

their poor. The Housing Board should have power to lend money to local

authorities, for the execution of approved schemes, for a period of 100

years at a nominal rate of interest, say 1½ or 2 per cent., the loss to

be made up out of the proceeds of Imperial taxation. To deal effectively

with the question, a yearly loan of at least £20,000,000 would be needed

for some years. Borrowing this at 3 per cent. and lending it out at 2

per cent. would create a charge of only £200,000 for each £20,000,000.

If then we authorized an annual issue of £20,000,000 for ten years—in

all £200,000,000, the total annual charge through loss of interest would

be but £2,000,000. Such a loan, about two-thirds of the cost of the late

South African war, would not only rehouse one-tenth of our people, but

place local authorities in possession of assets yielding a fine

revenue,[50] which on the Bournville plan, could be used for the

progressive extension of housing schemes. With access to capital for

housing at 2 per cent., and 100 years in which to repay it, local

authorities would be eager to claim their share of the national housing

provision. The loan would only be granted on the approval of plans for

the extension of the town boundaries, for transit facilities, and of

plans of the houses, gardens and recreation grounds for which the loan

was desired.

Failing action by the local authority, the Housing Board would make a

compulsory housing scheme[51] upon representation by the persons lacking

accommodation.

A drastic housing policy is needed as much in rural as in urban

districts. Want of housing accommodation is helping to thin our country

population, and the Housing Acts have been simply ignored in the past by

Rural Sanitary Authorities. On this head the Housing Bill of 1909 makes

salutary provisions giving county councils power to act in default of

rural district councils, and also giving power to the Local Government

Board to order schemes to be carried out within a reasonable time.

We have to do something more for the agricultural labourer than house

him, however, and here we touch another question intimately bound up

with national development—the land in its primary aspect as the basis of

agriculture and the source of food and material. This brings us to the

consideration of the empty country.

[Footnote 46: "Housing Conditions in Manchester" (Manchester University

Press price 1s.).]

[Footnote 47: This point should be read in connexion with the more

drastic proposal made in the next chapter.]

[Footnote 48: "The Example of Germany," by T. C. Horsfall. Published by

the Manchester University Press.]

[Footnote 49: Near York Mr Joseph Rowntree has successfully carried out

a housing scheme upon Bournville lines, and provided at the modest

rental of 4s. 6d. a week (the rates are an additional 8d. per week)

houses within the reach of unskilled workmen. The cottages are thus

described:

On the ground floor is a large living room (12 ft. 6 in. by 20 ft. 6

in.) with a bay window and plenty of cupboard accommodation, a small

pantry, and a scullery fitted with a copper, bath, and sink. The copper

is fitted with a patent exhaust to carry the steam direct into the

flues, thus preventing the discomfort which often arises in small houses

on washing day. The bath is fitted with a drop-down lid, forming a table

when the bath is not in use. Upstairs there are three bedrooms, each

fitted with a fireplace, and there is a large wardrobe on the landing.

The walls are plastered internally with adamant cement, which dries very

quickly, and assumes a smooth hard surface, and is thus more sanitary

than the ordinary plaster. All the rooms are fitted with picture

mouldings. Gas is supplied throughout the house, and city water is laid

on.

The gardens are not so large as at Bournville and the houses of cheaper

construction. The rental named, 4s. 6d. a week, is found to yield a

clear profit of 4 per cent., which is devoted, in happy emulation of the

Bournville scheme, to the extension of the little community.]

[Footnote 50: On this point the experience of Richmond, Surrey, is of

great value. In the "Housing Handbook" Alderman W. Thompson shows what

great financial advantages Richmond will reap from its cottage building,

although this was carried out on land costing £700 an acre. The houses,

built in 1894 and 1900, cost from £162 to £276 each and let from 6s. to

8s. per week. Altogether there are 132 houses containing 650 rooms and

132 sculleries, on six acres of ground costing £4,250 for site; £1,857

for roads and sewers; £505 for sundries, and £31,200 for building, being

a total cost of £37,812 and an average inclusive cost of £58 per room.

The income gives a gross profit which provides interest at 3¼ per cent.

on capital outlay, a sinking fund contribution of £486 per annum, and a

net profit of £38 per annum. Thus a large number of people have been

well housed at a profit to Richmond. At the end of 42 years from 1897

Richmond will have paid off the entire loan through the operation of the

sinking fund and be in possession of a property worth £35,000 and

producing a net income of over £1,600 a year. It is found that the

tenants take a great pride in their dwellings, and that their social

habits have greatly improved.]

[Footnote 51: The Grand Duchy of Hesse compels municipalities to borrow

money whether they like it or not. Hesse has determined that her people

shall be properly housed—a most wise and patriotic determination. The

Duchy therefore lays it down that the first duty of a municipality is to

buy land that its borders may extend in a proper and healthful manner.

Further, under the law of 1902, Town Councils which decline to build

houses for the people can be compelled to accept a loan from the bank

and to lend the money so obtained to a building society which is willing

to do the work.]

CHAPTER XVII

THE EMPTY COUNTRY

Although it is a well-known fact that the increase of population of the

United Kingdom is practically an addition to the urban population, it

may be well to preface consideration of the land question in its

relation to the national wealth and income by reminding the reader of

the precise facts of the case.

If we have regard only to the technical "Urban" and "Rural" Districts,

we get the following figures:

ENGLAND AND WALES: POPULATION OF URBAN AND RURAL DISTRICTS RESPECTIVELY

Urban Rural

Census of Districts. Districts.

1891 21,745,286 7,257,239

1901 25,058,355 7,469,448

Thus the urban population increased by 15.2 per cent., while the rural

population increased by 2.9 per cent.

Many of the so-called "Urban" Districts, however, are quite rural in

character, being often small towns dependent as business centres upon

the agricultural areas in which they are situated. In 1901 there were

215 Urban Districts with populations below 3,000; 211 with populations

between 3,000 and 5,000; and 260 with populations between 5,000 and

10,000.[52]

Having regard to these considerations the following figures are arrived

at:

(1) Classing with the Rural Districts all those Urban Districts which

had in 1901 populations below 10,000 we get:

Urban Rural

Population. Population.

1891 18,964,882 10,037,643

1901 21,959,998 10,567,845

This gives an urban increase of 15.8 per cent. and a rural increase of

5.3 per cent.

(2) Classing with the Rural Districts those Urban Districts which had

in 1901 populations below 5,000 we get:

Urban Rural

Population. Population.

1891 20,576,448 8,426,077

1901 23,803,714 8,724,129

This gives an urban increase of 15.7 per cent. and a rural increase of

3.5 per cent.

Combining the three tests, we see that the truth broadly stated is that

the rural population is almost stationary while the urban population is

rapidly increasing. The rural population is thus a diminishing

proportion of the whole.

In 23 rural counties in England and Wales actual depopulation occurred

between 1891 and 1901, ranging from a decrease of 7.5 per cent. in

Montgomeryshire to a decrease of 1.9 per cent. in Cornwall.

The Census Commissioners make an interesting test of depopulation of

rural areas by taking the 112 Registration Districts which are entirely

rural, and which had in 1901 an aggregate population of 1,330,319. Their

population at each census back to 1801 has been approximately as follows:

POPULATION OF 112 RURAL REGISTRATION DISTRICTS, 1801-1901

Increase + or

Census Year. Population. Decrease - in

preceding decennium.

1801 932,364 ...

1811 997,494 + 6.99

1821 1,139,137 + 14.20

1831 1,216,872 + 6.82

1841 1,288,410 + 5.88

1851 1,324,528 + 2.80

1861 1,321,870 - 0.20

1871 1,321,377 - 0.04

1881 1,313,570 - 0.59

1891 1,304,827 - 0.67

1901 1,330,319 + 1.95

The great advance in 1811-1821 was presumably due to the cessation of

the long war. In 1851-1891 actual depopulation occurred, but in

1891-1901 there was a gain of 1.95 per cent. Of the 112 districts,

however, 73 showed actual decrease in 1891-1901, the total increase

being entirely due to an advance in a few of the districts containing

mines. It is clear that in the last 50 years there has been actual

depopulation of strictly rural areas.

This becomes still plainer when we examine the facts given in the table

on page 237 as to the natural growth of the rural areas.

THE MIGRATION FROM THE COUNTRY

-----------------+-------------------+-----------+-----------+----------

| Population. | Increase | Excess of | Loss

+---------+---------+ of |Births over| by

-----------------+---------+---------+-----------+-----------+----------

entirely Rural |1,304,827|1,330,319| 24,492 | 150,437 | 124,945

| | | | |

10,000 |4,176,219|4,215,326| 39,107 | 414,816 | 375,709

+---------+---------+-----------+-----------+----------

Districts |5,481,046|5,545,645| 64,599 | 565,253 | 500,654

-----------------+---------+---------+-----------+-----------+----------

It will be seen that in a rural population of nearly 5½ millions, the

natural increase by excess of births over deaths was, in 1891-1901,

565,253, but in the same time 500,654 persons left these districts

either for urban England or for places abroad, so that the total

increase in population was only 64,599.

Turning to the number of persons employed in agricultural operations of

all kinds, the table on page 239 shows the decline which has occurred.

This extension of the table given in "Riches and Poverty," Edition 1905,

p. 223, modifies it somewhat. The reduction of agricultural labourers is

not so great as the crude totals suggest. It is the women and boys who

have chiefly disappeared from British agriculture, and it should be

observed that 248,500 wives and daughters disappeared in 1871 as

compared with 1861 merely by reason of the fact that they were

enumerated at the earlier date but not at the later one. According to

Lord Eversley's careful analysis ("Statistical Society's Journal,"

1907), the actual decline of male agricultural employment (men and boys)

in Great Britain was from 1,657,000 in 1861 to 1,236,000 in 1901, or, in

England and Wales alone, from 1,449,000 in 1861 to 1,079,000 in 1901.

This is a serious decline, but not as great as is commonly supposed.

Nothing is commoner than the belief that the trend to the towns is only

to be observed in the United Kingdom. As a matter of fact it is confined

to no country and is, indeed, a world-wide phenomenon. Between 1851 and

1906 the urban population of France increased from 25.5 per cent. to

42.1 per cent. of the whole. Between 1871 and 1905 the urban population

of Germany increased from 36.1 per cent. to 57.4 per cent. of the whole.

In both cases the population classed as "urban" is that contained in

towns with at least 2,000 inhabitants.

ENGLAND AND WALES: PERSONS EMPLOYED IN AGRICULTURE, 1851-1901

+------+---------------------------+-----------------------+

| | ADULTS | YOUNG PERSONS |

|Census| (Aged 20 and over). | (under 20). |

| of-- +---------+-------+---------+-------+-------+-------+

+------+---------+-------+---------+-------+-------+-------+

| 1851 |1,141,000|336,000|1,477,000|328,000|100,000|428,000|

| 1861 |1,119,000|301,000|1,420,000|323,000| 60,000|383,000|

| 1871 | 972,000|122,000|1,094,000|277,000| 52,000|329,000|

| 1881 | 884,000| 50,000| 934,000|254,000| 11,000|265,000|

| 1891 | 816,000| 40,000| 856,000|237,000| 6,000|243,000|

| 1901 | 750,000| 43,000| 793,000|186,000| 9,000|195,000|

+------+---------+-------+---------+-------+-------+-------+

+------+----------------------------+

| | TOTAL, ALL AGES. |

|Census| |

| of-- +---------+--------+---------+

+------+---------+--------+---------+

| 1851 |1,468,000| 436,000|1,905,000|

| 1861 |1,442,000| 361,000|1,803,000|

| 1871 |1,249,000| 175,000|1,424,000|

| 1881 |1,139,000| 61,000|1,200,000|

| 1891 |1,054,000| 46,000|1,099,000|

| 1901 | 936,000| 52,000| 988,000|

+------+---------+--------+---------+

I remind the reader of these facts because it is necessary to

distinguish between what is true and what is untrue in the arguments

used in support of the cry "Back to the Land." As a general rule the

stationariness of the rural population is attributed to cheap imports,

or to land tenure, or to want of housing accommodation, or to the

attractions of town life, or to the higher wages offered in industrial

pursuits. All these things are causes of migration to the towns, but one

of the most potent causes is rarely considered. It is the application of

machinery and improved methods to agriculture. To produce a given

quantity of food, far less labour is required than of old. Therefore,

even in a country like France, which is almost independent of imported

food, it is obvious that there must be a trend townwards as the labour

displaced from agriculture seeks other employment.

Thus, in considering land in its agricultural aspect _we must not regard

it as containing an unlimited field of employment_. Agricultural methods

will continue to improve, and the day will undoubtedly come when one

man's work applied in agriculture will literally feed a multitude.

But, having made that reservation, let us look at the French and German

figures in another aspect. We see that in France, although the urban

population has increased, it is still much less than one-half of the

whole. In Germany, again, the town population in 1910 is about 60 per

cent. of the whole. In our own country, if we counted as urban

population the inhabitants of all towns containing 2,000 and upwards, we

should find it amount to over 80 per cent. of the whole. While,

therefore, not losing sight of the reservation already made, it is clear

that, in the United Kingdom, causes other than the application of

machinery to agriculture have operated to produce urban congestion.

There was a time when no European country was so rich as England in men

who cultivated their own land. To-day there is no country in the world

in which cultivation and security of tenure are so widely divorced.

Whatever the trend to the towns in other countries may be, there is no

other country in which such a marked diminution in agricultural

employment has occurred as in the United Kingdom. The land which bred

the bowmen of Agincourt and the Ironsides of Cromwell now sends forth

the men of whom Sir Ian Hamilton wrote to Mr Horsfall "I will not give

you, a Manchester man, offence, if I say that their physique was hardly

equal to the fine standard of their determination and courage.... It is

the fault of some one that these brave and stubborn lads were not at

least an inch or two taller and bigger round the chest, and altogether

of a more robust and powerful build."

Looking at the industry of our people as a whole, the main fact which

stands out is want of security of employment. Nearly the whole of our

industrial workers are earners of weekly wages, and of our sparse

agricultural population but a small proportion are owners. Compare the

position of France. There, fully one-half the population are attached to

the soil by virtue of ownership and secure in the mother-earth which

nourishes them. They may be poor, many of these peasant proprietors, but

at least they are not constantly on the verge of hunger; at least they

have the glorious privilege of independence.

Our empty country-side is universally admitted to be a great national

danger. It is not alone that we are so much dependent upon imported

food; it is that the imported food is for the consumption of a race

degenerating in the unwholesome environment of town life. Everywhere the

cry of "Back to the Land" is raised, but, as though to mock that cry, it

is only answered by well-to-do weekenders, attendance upon whom, in

faked-up cottages from which labourers have been ousted, has become one

of our many degrading trades of luxury.

We must be under no illusions. We must not believe that mature and

debilitated town-dwellers can be planted out in rows to gain a living by

entire devotion to agriculture. We can hope for but little from farm

colonies for the unemployed. Our chief hope, here as elsewhere, is in

the children. We must seek to attach our present rural population to the

soil under such conditions that their children may see hope where now

there is none.

How shall we secure allotments and small holdings for the agricultural

labourer? Parliament in 1906-1909 has given much attention to rural

problems, and the Small Holdings Act of 1908, setting up Commissions

with power to make schemes for small holdings if County Councils neglect

to do so, extending to eighty years the period for which money may be

borrowed for the purposes of the Act, and giving powers for the

compulsory acquisition of suitable land, is now in operation. The Report

for 1908 shows that County Councils in England and Wales acquired 11,346

acres for small holdings and 304 acres for allotments.

We may venture to hope for better results than this, but is it asking

too much of the nation, at this juncture, to broaden its conceptions?

Why should we not, having regard to the extraordinary facts as to our

national wealth and income, having regard to the admitted dangers of our

present position, having regard to the best disposition and welfare of

our 44,500,000 people upon their island home of 77,000,000 acres,—why,

having regard to these things, should we not determine to secure

absolute control of area, and, having secured it, to order the first

essential of healthful life, proper distribution upon area?

As has been already pointed out in these pages, the 77,000,000 acres of

the United Kingdom, outside the tiny spots called towns which occupy an

almost negligible fraction of the whole, _produce a gross rental of

only_ £52,000,000. This is the sum at which the whole of the land of the

United Kingdom, save that small part which is attached to houses, was

assessed to Income Tax in 1908-9. It represents the rentals of

agricultural lands as they stand with all their farm-houses and other

buildings, roads, ditches, fences, etc. In 1898 the Royal Commission on

Agriculture valued this land at only eighteen years' purchase. Twenty

times £52,000,000 is only £1,040,000,000 or about one-half of one year's

income of the country. This, it will be remembered, was the valuation of

land which we adopted in Chapter 5.

The question I submit for consideration is this: Is it worth our while

to buy up our own birthright at the price of one-half of a single year's

income?

The question should be answered with due regard to all the

considerations as to agriculture, housing and the distribution of

population and industries which have been advanced in these pages. The

problem of the town is before us, and not alone the question of the

tilling of the soil. It should also be answered with due regard to the

question of food importation and the probabilities as to the continuance

of cheap supplies.

In 1875-6 the gross assessments of agricultural lands—an area very

little larger than at present, for, as has been shown, the largest town

occupies a relatively insignificant area—amounted to £67,000,000 or

£15,000,000 more than at the present time. If we had bought in 1875,

then, and rents had remained the same, we should have lost capital, but

would the value of the land have remained the same? In thirty years we

could have created a considerable yeomanry,—men holding land from the

State not in fee simple, but nevertheless in absolute security of

tenure. They could have paid us rentals at which small holdings would be

eagerly competed for, yet rentals larger than are at present derived by

the little sovereigns of the British country-side from their tenants.

Further, we should have stemmed the current of humanity which for thirty

years has flowed to the towns, and done something, in the phrase of

Ruskin, to "get as much territory as the nation has, well filled with

respectable persons."

My point as to the value that is and the value that might be is

illustrated by Sir Robert Edgcumbe's experiment with Rew Farm, in the

parish of Winterbourne St Martin, in Dorsetshire. Sir Robert bought this

farm of 343 acres for £5,050, made a road through it, and sold it in

small holdings at prices ranging from £7 to £20 per acre. The land was

eagerly taken up and the experiment has been a great success. When Sir

Robert bought the land in 1888 the outgoing tenant was in financial

straits—he could not make Rew Farm pay. It was rented at £240 per annum

and its net rateable value was £215. It is improbable that a new tenant

would have paid more than £200. Yet, under small cultivation, the

rateable value of Rew Farm rose from the £215 of 1888 to £346 in 1902, a

rise of 60 per cent. In the same period, the rateable value of the

parish of Winterbourne St Martin as a whole fell from £2,807 to £2,073.

Apart from the question of small holdings, nothing is more probable than

a rise in the value of British agricultural land to a point far beyond

any yet attained. Already, within the last few years, a revolution has

taken place in our wheat supplies—a revolution which has gone unnoticed

by the British public, so long accustomed to its miraculous cheap loaf

in the baker's shop that the miracle has become, as is the fate of all

miracles, a commonplace and unregarded thing. The table on p. 245 shows

the nature of the change which has occurred:

UNITED KINGDOM IMPORTS OF WHEAT AND FLOUR IN EQUIVALENT WEIGHT OF GRAIN

In Millions of Cwts.

------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

|1895.|1896.|1897.|1898.|1899.|1900.|

------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

Russia | 23.0| 17.2| 15.1| 6.4| 2.5| 4.5|

Roumania | 2.0| 5.4| 1.2| 0.2| | 0.7|

U.S.A. | 45.3| 52.8| 54.1| 62.0| 60.2| 57.4|

Argentina | 11.4| 5.0| 0.9| 4.0| 11.5| 18.7|

Canada | 5.1| 6.3| 6.9| 7.7| 8.7| 8.0|

India | 8.8| 2.1| 0.6| 9.5| 8.2| |

Australia | 3.6| | | 0.2| 3.0| 2.9|

------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

other countries |107.2| 99.6| 88.7| 94.4| 98.5| 98.6|

------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----

|1901.|1902.|1903.|1904.|1905.|1908.

------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----

Russia | 2.6| 6.6| 17.3| 23.7| 24.8| 4.6

Roumania | 0.5| 2.4| 3.1| 1.5| 2.1| 1.8

U.S.A. | 66.8| 65.0| 46.7| 18.5| 14.5| 40.7

Argentina | 8.3| 4.5| 14.2| 21.8| 24.1| 31.8

Canada | 8.6| 12.2| 14.5| 9.0| 8.4| 16.8

India | 3.3| 8.8| 17.1| 25.5| 22.9| 2.9

Australia | 6.2| 4.2| | 11.4| 11.5| 5.8

------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----

other countries |101.0|107.9|116.7|118.2|114.2|109.1

------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----

In 1902 America sent us 65,000,000 cwts. of wheat. In 1903 this great

supply fell sharply and in 1904-5 it was reduced to less than 20,000,000

cwts. In 1908 there was recovery, but this was but temporary. Sooner or

later the United States supply will wholly cease. By 1925 the United

States will have some 110,000,000 to 120,000,000 people to feed.

In "Riches and Poverty," 1905 edition, I wrote:—

"The United States failing, we still secured our imported wheat supplies

in 1904 and 1905, but at an increased price. Canada failed, but those

uncertain suppliers, India and Australia, came to the rescue. Argentina

sent us more than ever before and Russia also came into the export

market. But the facts as to America remind us that none of these

suppliers can be relied upon indefinitely, and some of them are

notoriously uncertain. Canada has done badly in 1904 and there will

always be difficulties of climate to consider. Moreover, the United

States will in future come into the market as a buyer and compete with

us for the exports of North-West Canada and Argentina. The sum is that

we cannot for the future depend upon dirt cheap wheat raised by scratch

farming on virgin soil, and that, as a consequence, the price of wheat

will rise. As with wheat, so, sooner or later, with many other foods.

When it comes to putting more labour and manure, and less luck, into

farming in new lands, then conditions will be equalized, prices of

produce will rise, and the price of British land will rise also."

It is now (1910) only necessary to add that the price of wheat has moved

thus:

THE RISE IN WHEAT

British Foreign Indian and

Wheat. Wheat. Colonial.

_s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._

1894 (lowest on record) 22 10 22 10 23 6

1904 28 4 30 5 29 7

1905 29 8 31 2 30 8

1906 28 3 30 1 30 3

1907 30 7 32 4 33 10

1908 32 0 36 0 36 1

1909 36 11 39 2 40 3

Merely as a commercial speculation, then, it would be well worth our

while to invest £1,000,000,000 in buying up the United Kingdom. The land

is now probably at bed-rock price, and we should come in, as the slang

phrase goes, on the ground floor. The really dear land, that of the

towns, we could pass by. We want to get our industries and our people

out of the towns and with control of area we could do it. The State, as

landlord from John o'Groats to Land's End, could afford to dispense with

the acquisition of the tiny areas upon which the majority of our people

are now crowded. Land nationalization, viewed in this way, presents no

insuperable financial difficulties. On the contrary, it would put us in

possession, at an absurdly low price, of the opportunity to recreate our

social structure and the means to dispense with all taxation in the time

to come. Under wise management the national acreage could soon be made

to yield a revenue from farms, allotments, market gardens, houses,

factories, forests, etc., of something over three pounds per acre on the

average, for it would house the greater part of our people and produce a

larger part of our food by intensive cultivation. If we wisely use our

resources, our 77,000,000 can be made to produce, under methods of

intensive cultivation and co-operation already in practice, if not

enough food to feed our population, certainly a larger proportion of our

supplies than at present.

Also worth consideration is the important matter of afforestation. There

are now but some 3,000,000 acres of woods and plantations in this

country, and many of these are badly managed, for forestry is almost an

unknown art in the United Kingdom. Landowners do not understand it;

their agents do not understand it. Yet its possibilities are enormous

and might be realized within twenty to thirty years of the simple

financial operation which I have suggested. There need be no acre of the

77,000,000 not useful or not beautiful. Millions of acres of land now

termed waste may be clothed in verdure to yield a steady and certain

income and make us largely independent of imported timber. There is no

greater authority on this subject than Dr Schlich, and he gives it as

his opinion, confirmed by thorough investigation of British and foreign

conditions,[53] that five or six million acres could be brought under

wood, thus producing the bulk of the timber we require. Every acre

afforested would require about £2 worth of labour. After planting, each

acre would need only about five days' labour a year, but that means

30,000,000 days of work. The timber grown and cut, there would be the

transport, lumbering, and allied industries calling for labour. Dr

Schlich estimates that 500,000 men, or say 2,500,000 people, would find

employment through the afforestation of say six million acres, and the

estimate is based upon solid foundations.

It may be asked, why do the present owners of "waste" land miss such an

opportunity? The answer has several parts. Landowners are for the most

part (1) ignorant of the subject, (2) unprovided with capital, (3)

unwilling to wait. A business which does not begin to yield income for

some 15 years is not for the average private landowner. But the people,

who have waited so long for the right to tread their own soil, can wait

these fifteen years and other fifteen if need be.

Given the overlordship of area, the establishment of a permanent Land

and Housing Commission, the nationalization of the means of transport,

the establishment of well endowed schools of agriculture and forestry,

and a generation of well-born children, what possibilities open out

before us!

Is this conception too large for a race which talks of Empire? In the

United States there is a private trust which was organized by a single

individual with a capital of 1,000,000,000 dollars—a trust which owns

territory, mines, railways, steamships and mills, and supports 1,000,000

people. Business transactions are growing greater, and must greater

grow, for the world cannot afford to peddle with its resources. The

future is with the men who realize that it is not more difficult to

think in millions than in thousands. Within the last few years we have

spent on a war with a small people £250,000,000 in the name of Empire.

£250,000,000 is the price of one-fourth of the entire area of the Mother

Country. It is high time for a little Imperial thinking in the home

market.

[Footnote 52: These facts are summarized from the Census Reports.]

[Footnote 53: See his excellent "Forestry in the United Kingdom."]

CHAPTER XVIII

ORGANIZATION

It has already been remarked in these pages that quite inadequate

numbers of persons are engaged in the production of many useful

articles. This would be true even if all the individuals enumerated as

producers in the census returns were fully employed upon existing plant

and under their existing managers. As a matter of fact, they are not

fully employed. Unemployment or short time always exists in greater or

less degree. Between inadequate numbers and inadequate employment of

those numbers the quantity of _ponderable commodities_ produced in the

United Kingdom is so small, as we have seen, that only a small fraction

of our people are well housed or well clothed. A great multitude craves

for satisfaction of elementary needs, while a host of shopkeepers wait

hungrily for customers who cannot buy.

In the nineteenth century enormous strides were made in the invention of

machinery and labour-saving appliances and methods, and now, at the

opening of the twentieth century, we possess means more than ample for

the satisfaction of all. If invention now came to a standstill, we

could, with such science as we now command, produce, or obtain by

exchange for our production, far more food, houses, clothes, furniture

and other commodities than we actually need, and this while our

population enjoyed ample leisure in which to develop their higher

faculties.

What, then, is at fault? Not only do the majority of our men work

arduously, but an immense army of women and young children are also

engaged in production and distribution. Of the population of England and

Wales between the ages of 20 and 55 only 179,946 males and 823,135

unmarried females figured in the Census of 1901 as "without specific

occupations." What is the explanation, then, of an insufficient and

ill-distributed production? The answer can be given in a few words. It

is want of organization which leads to such poor results from so much

hard labour. _A poor stream of ponderable commodities filters through

thousands of unnecessary channels, and becomes the subject of many

strange services, each of which claims and gets some sort of reward. By

the enumeration of each of these services the total income which we

examined at the beginning of this book is made up. The Error of

Distribution of the national income connotes a wasteful and inadequate

production._

Waste in actual production is still exceedingly great. In only a

minority of cases are factories equipped with the best plant and

appliances. Model factories, in which the most economical production is

attained, are still exceptional. There are tens of thousands of small

employers who lack the capital properly to equip their establishments,

and who perforce waste labour.

That is to speak of production as a whole, without reference to the

nature of the goods produced, but when we come to analyse the product,

waste is everywhere apparent. Labour, to be economically employed,

should produce only genuine articles, capable of application for a

considerable period to the purpose which they are designed to serve. As

we know only too well, a very great part of our manufacturing output is

of articles which make-believe, and it is only a small fraction of

production in any branch of industry which is the best of its kind. Our

competitive system is largely an endeavour to make profits out of the

sale of trashy articles, the production of which wastes alike the labour

engaged in making them and the labour for which they are exchanged. It

is difficult to say which is more pitiable, the waste of labour upon

rubbish designed for the consumption of the poor, or the waste of labour

upon luxuries designed for the consumption of the rich.

Upon the waste connected with the trades and services of luxury I have

already dwelt at some length. Here it is only necessary to remind the

reader that it is of two kinds. There is the multiplication of servants

and attendants upon rich men and their houses and animals,[54] and there

is the employment of nominally useful workmen in the manufacture and

repair of the instruments of luxury.

Turning to the marketing and distribution of commodities we have many

forms of waste of labour to study. Each manufacturer in a trade, selling

his goods in competition with others, sends out his agent or agents to

assert, not always truly, that his wares are the best and the cheapest,

and to secure orders for them. Thus a large number of able-bodied men

are divorced from production and made a quite unnecessary factor in

distribution. At the Census of 1901, 64,322 commercial travellers were

enumerated in England and Wales, as against 44,055 in 1891! These men

are usually of an exceedingly capable type, whose work, better directed,

might be of great service in useful production.

Each factory, however small, must have its separate clerical staff, and

to thousands of men wasted as travellers we have to add tens of

thousands wasted as clerks. In the United Kingdom, in 1901, there were

439,972 commercial or business clerks, as against 300,615 in 1891.

The commodities produced by the wasteful competitive factories are

often, too often, dealt with by wholesale middlemen, agents, brokers,

factors, merchants, who, with their staffs of clerks and warehousemen

account for an uncertain but considerable number of the working

community. Our imports of food, which in an organized community could so

easily be handled by a single staff at each port, are scrambled for by a

great host of merchants, factors and commission agents.

A most conspicuous waste in distribution is in advertising, one of the

most unnecessary of all trades. In the game of competition, those often

win, not who supply the best goods, but who say that they supply the

best goods. As a result there has sprung up an enormous industry with

many branches which is engaged in pushing the sale of a few good and

many worthless articles. It "employs" thousands of male and female

clerks and canvassers, and directly and indirectly lays many nominally

useful trades under contribution. Printers, authors and journalists,

enamellers, carpenters, bill-stickers, paper-makers and others are

engaged to furnish the materials of the advertisements. Altogether it is

probable that some 80,000 people find a "living" in connexion with

advertising, when they should be doing useful work. Some part of the

stream of useful commodities is directed to them, and in return they

give nothing. Individually, they may be honest, industrious people,

doing the work they are employed to do to the best of their ability.

From a national point of view they are wasting their time. It may be

added that when they are pushing the sale of "patent" medicines,

whiskies and complexion creams they are doing something worse than waste

time.

Chiefly arising out of our commercial system of distribution and the

crimes and misdemeanours which it creates, the various branches of the

legal profession absorb a considerable number of able-bodied men who

contribute nothing to the wealth of the nation but who are rewarded by a

large share of the national income. At the Census of 1901 as many as

27,184 barristers and solicitors and 42,339 law clerks were

recorded.[55] These 69,523 individuals with their dependents, probably

numbering nearly 300,000 in all, help to attenuate the thin stream of

ponderable commodities which flow from the places where people labour to

useful ends.

We pass to the work of the hundreds of thousands of retail shopkeepers

and their servants, and here again we find a vast amount of wasted

labour. In each trade in each district there are a quite unnecessary

number of tradesmen hunting for profits. It is not uncommon to find

half-a-dozen butchers' men calling for orders upon the householders of a

single street.

It is sometimes represented to shopkeepers that any movement towards

collectivism threatens their livelihood. Shopkeepers will do well to

remember that it is unrestrained individualism which is their worst

enemy. In almost every branch of retail distribution the multiple shop

principle is eliminating the independent shopkeeper and substituting

badly paid shop "managers." Apologists of individualism boast of the

economy which is thus being achieved. Thus M. Leroy Beaulieu in his

"Collectivism" (which is an attack on collectivism) writes, "The

tendency of civilization, where freedom exists, appears to be towards a

reduction in the number of persons who live entirely by commerce, owing

to the gradual substitution of large for small industries that is now in

progress. Would it be possible for collectivism to act more rapidly or

efficiently?" M. Leroy Beaulieu forgets that the crushing of the small

shopkeeper by private monopolists accentuates the error of distribution,

while collectivism economizes labour for the general good.

What I have written does not apply, of course, to all fields of labour.

It has long been recognized that certain services can only be

effectually and efficiently performed under one management. Railways,

tramways, water-service, lighting, and so forth have come to be looked

upon as "natural monopolies." Even Mr Henry George, who thought that

"Socialism tended towards Atheism" and who considered that "limitation

of working hours and of the labour of women and children" could only be

enforced by methods which "multiply officials, interfere with personal

liberty, tend to corruption and are liable to abuse,"[56] admitted the

existence of "necessary monopolies" which might be treated as functions

of the State. Indeed, it is apparent to the most unthinking that between

two points A and B there can only be one best route for a railway, and

that, therefore, railway service between points A and B should be a

monopoly. Similarly it would be an obvious absurdity to construct two

sewers in one road, competing with each other for the removal of refuse,

or for two or more gas managements to run mains in the same streets. In

these and many other cases it is clearly recognized that economy of

labour is consistent with monopoly alone, and the only question that

remains to decide is whether the necessary monopoly should be in public

or private hands. I do not purpose here to discuss that question, for at

this date it is scarcely an open one. An overwhelming weight of opinion

has decided that public ownership must go with monopoly, wherever

monopoly is shown to be necessary.

It is not so generally recognized that proper economy of labour and a

proper distribution of the products of labour can only be secured by:

(1) The conversion of all common services into monopolies, and

(2) The ownership of those monopolies by the public.

Nevertheless, the waste arising from hundreds or thousands of

unnecessary centres of production and distribution is becoming better

understood, and in the United Kingdom, as in America and Germany, big

fish are increasingly eager to swallow the little fish. Combination in

the field of production is no less common than the unification of

control of stores and shops in the field of ultimate distribution.

Organization is in the air, and organization, commenced by individuals

for individual gain, can only end in the erection of monopolies, which,

for its own safety and health, the public, sooner or later, will find

itself compelled to control.

In the foregoing pages we have considered the proper use of area and the

healthy housing of the people as questions urgently calling for

collective action. The colonization of British land by the revival of

agriculture and the redistribution of industries is ultimately bound up

with the development of Transport and Power Distribution. The former is

now a problem of private monopoly which we have allowed to arise. The

latter will become one if we do not at once realize the possibilities of

power distribution and determine that they are of so far-reaching a

character as to demand public ownership from the beginning.

If we are successfully to take our industries and people out of

congested centres and spread them out over a considerable area we need

cheap and rapid transport and cheap and easily handled power. The

transport and power transmission of the future will be electrical. It is

upon record that in the early days of the steamship a Royal Commission

"sat upon" the then vexed question of "Steam versus Sails," and

unanimously decided that sails were the only practical wear for the

Royal Navy. One is reminded of this fact when one contemplates the slow

progress made by electric traction in this country, and the marked

reluctance to experiment on the part of those types of private and

injurious monopolists—our great railway companies. After much thought

and with the assistance of a pushful American citizen our London

"Underground" is, as I write, electrified, many years after electric

traction was known in Darkest Africa, but so far as the greater part of

our transport system is concerned we are at a standstill. The field of

experiment is resigned to the Americans and the Germans.

The production and distribution of light, heat and power simply mean the

production and distribution of energy in the form we call electricity,

and since transport is simply motion we see that the future of lighting,

heating, transport and power is the future of electricity.

In the matter of transport there is perhaps something to be said for the

statesmen who, without the slightest conception of the possibilities of

steam power, allowed our railways and canals to be made sources of

profit for private speculators. They erred in ignorance of the magnitude

and importance of the subject. There will be no such excuse if we allow

the production and distribution of electrical power to become the sport

of private monopolists. If there is blindness in this matter it will be

wilful blindness. For each district there can be but one power supply

consistently with economy, and so much hangs upon the wise distribution

of power that it is most important the public should be made to realize

the nature of the interests which are at stake.

The adoption of the mysterious word "Electricity" is a most unfortunate

thing. If the public understood that electricity is Energy and that it

is transmutable at will into Power or Light or Heat, they would better

realize the possibilities of the future in town and country, and all

that the proper organization and control of Energy means to them. They

would at once resolve that the power of government must not be divorced

from the Power which will run in the electrical mains of the future, and

by the aid of which we can transform the face of our land.

Let me drop the word Electricity and use the simple term Energy. Energy

will be produced at a central power station and distributed over a

considerable area. The energy mains will carry the means of lighting,

the means of motion (transport), the means of heating, the means of

manufacturing in large, the means of manufacturing in small, the means

of cooking, the means of cleaning, to every person in that area. Energy

will be at the disposal of every factory, of every workshop,—and of

every private house. No building will be without its motors, large or

small. Smoke and all the waste and dirt of smoke will disappear.

I am not speaking of a remote future, but of possibilities which can

forthwith be realized. How important it is, then, that this Energy

supply, which is already entering and will increasingly enter into our

everyday lives, should be publicly owned from the first. Given private

ownership, the monopolists of Energy will run their mains where most

profit is quickly to be garnered instead of seeking, as we should seek,

first profits in the thinning out of towns and the restoration of the

health of our people. If we part with the control of power, it is Power

indeed which we part with. We should part, also, it is important to add,

with a magnificent source of public revenue, which will amount, in the

time to come, to much more than the revenue of our railways. It is only

by securing the distribution of such profits by public ownership that we

can make any impression upon the melancholy facts treated in the first

part of this volume.

As I have already said, it is commonly recognized that such a function

as a tramway or water supply must of necessity be a monopoly, public or

private, if its working is to be economical. It is not difficult to show

that the control of the production and distribution of all articles of

common use must be unified if labour is not to be wasted. Just as one

water main and one alone is needed for the service of a row of houses,

so, to use a familiar illustration, one vehicle and one alone is needed

to supply the same row of houses with milk. If a number of milk-sellers

are competing for the custom of one small neighbourhood, as is usually

the case, a quite considerable number of able-bodied men, boys and

animals are engaged in unnecessarily traversing the same streets, one

after the other, to do the work which could be performed with much more

ease, certainty and expedition by a fraction of their number. Each of

the small tradesmen has to keep a set of accounts demanding his own

attention or that of his wife or clerk. Each milk dealer, again, has his

separate supply of milk from the railway station, sent by some farmer at

a distance. Each of these doses of milk is the subject of a separate

transaction, wasting labour at both ends of the journey and in transit.

From first to last, the process is clumsy and tedious, wasting labour at

every stage. The waste is precisely of the same nature as would occur if

several water companies supplied a certain street with water and had

their mains running side by side. There would be just as much absurdity,

and no more, in serving my road by four water-mains as in serving it by

the four milk chariots which now pay it such frequent visits.

And to pursue this useful illustration a little further there is another

analogy between a water supply and a milk supply which should not be

forgotten. The importance of pure milk is not less than the importance

of pure water. The milk supply of towns is derived from a thousand

tainted sources, the precise nature of which is unknown both to the

consumers and to the milk dealers. I fear we should drink less milk if

we could see the handling of it—the literal handling of it—from the

start. I have a lively recollection of the last milking operation I

witnessed. Suffice it to say that I agreed, afterwards, that the butter

made on the farm looked to be very fine butter, and that I was entirely

satisfied with an ocular demonstration of its many virtues. As is

pointed out by Dr G. F. McCleary, the Battersea Medical Officer of

Health,[57] "if large towns want clean milk they must not look to

outside authorities to get it for them." The ordinary milk farmer is a

conservative creature who does not appreciate the "faddist" with his

demands for a clean milker and a clean cow. A dirty person draws milk

from a dirty animal into a dirty receptacle, and tons of manure come to

London with the morning milk. Dr Leslie Mackenzie, Medical Officer of

the Local Government Board for Scotland,[58] thus describes the process:

"To watch the milking of cows is to watch a process of unscientific

inoculation of a pure (or almost pure) medium with unknown quantities of

unspecified germs.... Whoever knows the meaning of aseptic surgery must

feel his blood run cold when he watches, even in imagination, the

thousand chances of germ inoculation. From cow to cow the milker goes,

taking with her (or him) the stale epithelium of the last cow, the

particles of dirt caught from the floor, the hairs, the dust, and the

germs that adhere to them.... Everywhere, throughout the whole process

of milking, the perishable, superbly nutrient liquid receives its

repeated sowings of germinal and non-germinal dirt. In an hour or two

its population of triumphant lives is a thing imagination boggles at.

And this in good dairies! What must it be where cows are never groomed,

where hands are only accidentally washed, where heads are only

occasionally cleaned, where spittings (tobacco or other) are not

infrequent, where the milker may be a chance-comer from some filthy

slum—where, in a word, the various dirts of the civilized human, are at

every hand reinforced by the inevitable dirts of the domesticated cow?

Are these exaggerations? They are not. I could name many admirable byres

where these conditions are, in a greater or less degree, normal."

There is but one way to obtain clean and pure milk and at the same time

to secure economy of labour in its production and distribution coupled

with adequate remuneration of the labour so economized, and that is the

way of public ownership. The municipality should conduct the entire

operation of milk supply. By so doing it would prolong the lives of its

citizens, save the lives of many infants, and add to its revenue.

A public milk supply, even in relation to the food of adults, is an

urgent need. When considered in relation to infantile mortality the

question is seen to be a vital one. All medical officers of health are

at one on the point. We must have municipal milk depots if the children

are to be saved, and if we supply milk for children and nursing mothers

we may as well enlarge our basis of operations and make the milk

service, like the water service, a complete municipal monopoly.

Thus organized, another great service would be lifted out of the sphere

of bargaining and chicanery and adulteration. In another industry the

waste of labour would cease. In another trade men would work with intent

to serve, and cease to hunt profits at the cost of their bodies and

souls.

The case for the municipalization of the milk supply is a very forcible

one, but it is not more so than that for the public ownership of other

common services. The point as to waste of labour in production or

distribution largely affects them all. The dangers of adulteration and

dirt touch not milk alone, but the manufacture and distribution of every

commodity. Commercialism has undermined honesty. Sham, shoddy and

make-believe—these are erected in the form of houses, sewn up in the

form of suits, packed in tins to mock children as food, made the sole

occupation of millions of quite honest people. If honesty of production

is to be regained, the great services must pass, one by one, under

public control, and as each passes another opportunity for the amassing

of private fortunes will pass away and another factor in the Error of

Distribution will be cancelled. The best services at low charges for the

public will be accompanied by ample but not excessive remuneration of

management, a proper reward and short hours for the privates of

industry, and the accumulation of just so much profit in the public

treasury as may be deemed necessary to provide for new capital,

contingencies, or for public non-revenue services. Thus, and thus alone,

can we raise the status of the mass of the people and prevent the

congestion of wealth in a few hands. There can be no proper diffusion of

wealth until we have ended the system by which good and bad employers

use the lives of the multitude for their profit and pleasure, now

working them arduously in exchange for a payment which is an unfair

remuneration of the service, and anon refusing them even the opportunity

to do hard labour.

The remarkable success of municipal trading, so far, may be measured by

the bitterness of the attacks which have been made upon it by private

capitalists. The recent complaints of the railway companies as to the

competition of municipal tramways entirely dispose of the theory that

private enterprise alone can ensure economical management and an

efficient production. It is argued that public bodies cannot obtain

faithful service from their employees, and that businesses managed by

them are bound to fail because the men in command do not understand the

interests they seek to control or the methods of industry. Capital, it

is represented, is bound to be wasted, and the tax-payer certain to

suffer in pocket as part proprietor of an unsuccessful business, even as

he suffers also as a consumer of his own poor product. In reply it is

only necessary to point out that there is nothing which can be urged

against a trading municipality which cannot also be urged against a

limited liability company. In the latter case, as in the former, the

shareholders know nothing of the details of the business they own. In

each there is a governing body which in its turn usually knows little of

the technicalities of the business undertaken. Thus the chairman of a

well-known steel company is a solicitor. The boards of directors of the

majority of our leading limited companies are composed of men who are

strangers to the businesses they "direct." In practice management

devolves upon the Managing Director, who is usually a man well versed in

his trade or profession. We see, therefore, that a limited liability

company, after all, is in precisely the same position as a municipality.

The private monopolists are compelled to find a practical man to manage

their business and make profits for them. That is precisely what the

municipality does. As a matter of fact, some of the cleverest men in the

United Kingdom are serving municipalities as advising and managing

engineers, instead of hiring themselves out to some board of directors.

What do railway directors, for example, know of railway management? Do

they travel on their own line, note its deficiencies, and repair them?

Do they take a practical hand in its affairs? No. The practical

management is in the hands of certain paid servants, goods managers,

general managers, locomotive superintendents, and so forth. Is it

seriously argued that an individual engineer, as locomotive

superintendent of a private railway company, is more efficient than he

would be in the service of say the London County Council? If so, how

does it come about that the railway companies are losing trade while the

L.C.C. trams are crowded? If so, how is it that to travel on the South

Eastern Railway is a martyrdom, while to travel on a L.C.C. tram is a

pleasure?

It will be seen on reflection that the only difference between the

company and the municipality is this. In the case of the company the

qualification of the directors is merely the owning of stock or shares

in the undertaking, and the perfunctory votes of a few shareholders. In

the case of the municipality the "director" has to secure the suffrages

of a great body of his fellow-citizens. As for nepotism, it is far more

common in private trade than in public life in this country. In nearly

every private business some inefficient son or cousin or nephew is

"provided for," to the loss of the undertaking. Competitive industry is

full of square men carefully planted in round holes by their friends and

relatives.[59] In the municipal service there are fewer wasters than are

to be found connected with great limited liability companies. As for

waste of capital, it is common in private business, and its loss is as

real to the community, from an economic point of view, as the loss of

capital by a municipality. As for negligence and theft, these are common

in all kinds of business undertakings, but as a general rule audit and

control are stricter in municipal trading than in the case of private

companies. As for cheerful service, the reader has but to compare the

servants of municipal tramways with those of any private omnibus

company. My own experience is that it is the municipal servant who is

the more civil and obliging. Perhaps it is because the municipality

gives him better wages, shorter hours, and a decent coat. As for the

product of the machine, the London County Council gives the public

longer rides for the same fares while paying its men better. Thus the

share of the product which once went to swell private fortunes is

distributed, and by so much the Error of Distribution is reduced.

What we have lost through the private ownership of our railways may be

gauged by the experience of Belgium. The Belgian State Railways sell

tickets which enable one to travel continuously, if desired, for the

time specified thereon, within the limits of the country. For instance a

five-day ticket will cost 16s. 6d. second class, or 9s. 6d. third class.

During the life of one of these tickets it serves as a pass, and it is

only necessary to show it upon request. The total length of the railways

is nearly 3,000 miles. All that is required to obtain the circular

tickets is to present at the office an unmounted photograph of small

size, which is attached to the ticket as a means of identification. When

the ticket is purchased an extra 4s. is demanded for the safe return of

the ticket after its term of usefulness expires. On the morning after

the expiration of the ticket it can be delivered at any ticket office

along the line, and the 4s. extra will be returned. This system enables

one to travel at a minimum expense. One would like to know why, if

private trading produces the best results, that travel is cheap in

Belgium and dear in England. Why cannot a Briton, favoured as he is with

all the alleged virtues of private enterprise in railway management,

obtain a circular ticket to travel in the United Kingdom? The benefits

of the Belgian railways are conspicuous in the matter of the housing

question. Cheap workmen's tickets are issued at rates so low that men

are enabled to live at considerable distances from their work. How low

the fares are may be gathered from the following figures:

WORKMEN'S TICKETS ON BELGIAN STATE RAILWAYS

For one Journey daily

Distance. to and fro.

Six Days' Ticket.

Miles. _s._ _d._

3 0 9¼

6 1 0

12 1 2½

24 1 7¼

31 1 9¾

62 2 6¼

Thus the daily return fare for 31 miles is less than 3¾d.!

The special workmen's tariff has existed in Belgium since 1870, and was

at first simply introduced to give Belgian manufacturers the command of

plenty of cheap labour. But the Minister builded bigger than he knew,

for the cheap fares have caused a profound revolution in the position of

Belgian workmen. In 1870, 14,223 tickets were issued; in 1890,

1,188,415; in 1901, 4,412,723! As a result it is estimated that 100,000

industrial workers, out of a total number of 900,000, although employed

in the towns, continue to live in the country, own a patch of ground,

and, with the higher wages of the town, enjoy the inestimable advantages

of country life.

It is only through the nationalization of our railways that we can

secure (1) for the travelling public the speed, safety and comfort which

science has taught us how to command, (2) for the railway servants

safety and a just share of the product of their labour, and (3) for the

goods service rapid and economical transport. It is nothing less than

national shame that our railway men receive an average wage of only 25s.

per week. It is nothing less than national folly that our lives are

placed at the mercy of underpaid and overworked signalmen.

A striking illustration of national treatment as compared with the

existing private exploitation of our national wealth is to be found in

the coal trade. Upon coal is built the wealth and commerce of the United

Kingdom. To it we owe our pre-eminence in manufactures and our

world-wide shipping and commerce. Without it the United Kingdom would

quickly sink to the position of a third-rate power. It might be assumed

_a priori_, therefore, that the production and use of coal would be

regarded by the British Government as a matter of national concern. As a

matter of incredible fact, so little do we regard coal production that

we even allow our rare supplies of naval coal to remain in private hands

and to be sold freely to foreigners. The tradition of "liberty" could

surely no further go.

From first to last private coal production and private coal distribution

are wasteful of life, material, and labour. Of our output of 260,000,000

tons of coal less than 10,000,000 tons are mined by machinery! In

nine-tenths of our coal-mines coal-cutting machines are unknown! Thus a

vast amount of unnecessary hand labour is used in a degrading and

dangerous occupation. From a national point of view it is undesirable

that a single unnecessary man should descend the mines. Under private

exploitation coal-mining employment reads thus (I quote from the Census

of Production Report, 1907):

UNITED KINGDOM COAL-MINES, 1907

------------+------------------------+------------------------+-------

| MALES. | FEMALES. | Total

+--------+-------+-------+--------+-------+-------+ both

------------+--------+-------+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------

Below Ground| 43,862 |625,773|669,635| | | |669,635

Above Ground| 15,623 |135,985|151,608| 643 | 4,681 | 5,324 |156,932

------------+--------+-------+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------

Total | 59,485 |761,758|821,243| 643 | 4,681| 5,324 |826,567

------------+--------+-------+-------+--------+-------+ ------+-------

With coal-mining organized with due regard to national welfare, there

would be no boys, fewer men, and more machines in the depths of our

mines, while the employment of girls and women even in surface work

would be unthinkable. It is true that private capital may not now, as it

did in the 'forties, employ young girls and boys under ten in its "dens

of darkness." But it deliberately sacrifices hundreds of lives every

year by using inefficient plant and by the use of explosives, and still

we permit boys to go down the pits. In the holocaust in the Rhondda in

1905 many children perished. Not infrequently three generations of a

single family may be found working in the same colliery. Few people out

of the industry know that 44,000 boys work in our coal-pits.

With our collieries in our own hands we should not only keep boys out of

the mines, but use every possible mechanical appliance to reduce the

number of men required to get the coal. We should seek for new

appliances to displace labour from such an unhealthy and dangerous

calling. To the same end we should seek to prevent the waste of coal in

every direction. Shot-firing would of course go, and after undercutting

the coal by electrical or hydraulic machinery we should bring it down by

hydraulic pressure.

Having secured an economical production, in which we should no longer

commit the crime of killing a thousand miners every year, we should

distribute the coal cheaply to our local authorities, who would act as

distributing agents. The army of coal merchants and their clerks and the

thousand and one artful dodges of the retail coal trade would disappear,

and the public would secure their coal economically.

What is the alternative to public ownership of common services? The

alternative is the rule of the "combine" or "trust," for it cannot be

too clearly realized that the organization of production and

distribution must proceed. But organization by private hands,—the

combination of industrial units into great trusts economizing

management, production and distribution,—cannot safely be tolerated. It

means the wielding of the chief power in the State by monopolists who

will use their power for private ends. The era of private competition is

closing. On every hand capital is combining with capital in restraint of

competition. Such combinations threaten the public welfare in several

directions. They can make it practically impossible for new capital to

enter an industry. They can, while economizing labour, keep the profits

arising from economy in their own hands, and build up gigantic fortunes

while increasing unemployment. They can offer such opposition to trades

unionism as to wield untrammelled power over their employees. They can

accentuate that Error of Distribution which it should be our chief

purpose to modify and remove.

Finally, the organization of services under public control is the only

remedy for unemployment, for unemployment is but a phase of poverty.

Underpaid or not paid at all, wrongfully employed or unemployed,

overworked or underworked, these conditions are the inevitable

accompaniment of a state of society in which individuals make bargains

with individuals with a view not to service but to profit. To the

individual the unemployed workman is a pitiable object—that is all. To

the nation the unemployed workman is something more than pitiable; he is

a dead loss. Unless physically or mentally unfit, and therefore entitled

to gratuitous service, he should be employed in the scheme of the

nation's work. The community needs the service of all its members; there

is none superfluous, none. While yet one uncomfortable house rears its

head, while yet one person goes ill-clad, while yet one rod of area

remains unused, there is work to do, but to utilize the work of every

man economically and wisely in the performance of necessary work is only

possible through organization. We may delude ourselves how we will with

palliatives; we shall find no remedy for unemployment short of the

control by the community of the _essential_ work of the community. While

we leave the direction of labour in the hands of a few rich men there

will ever be a surplus of labour left for our hapless "government" to

deal with wastefully. While the community resigns its right to decide

its own destinies by submitting to the rule of the rich, there will

remain the problem of poverty of which unemployment is not the worst

part.

Let it be clearly understood that, as things are, there is only one real

form of government that matters, and that is the rule of the employed by

the employer. The real arbiters of our destinies are not the King's

Ministers, but the few men who have power of life and death over their

fellows through the giving or withholding of employment. The majesty of

the law decides what a man shall _not_ do. The majesty of the employer

decides what a man shall do. The time has come when we must govern

ourselves, not negatively by way of restraint, but positively by way of

action. It is time that we determined where our roads should run and in

what fashion and in what employments we should engage ourselves. It is

time that we took stock of the lives and the homes of our people and

resolved to abolish their poverty by organizing their labour.

[Footnote 54: It it a melancholy fact that those employed in the service

of waste are often better paid than those engaged in useful production.

In a recent action brought by a cloak-room attendant at a fashionable

restaurant it came to light that in two cloak-rooms each of four

attendants drew as his share of the "tips" over £3 per week.]

[Footnote 55: I hope that no manual workman who reads these lines will

deduce from what I have written that, as things are now, his labour is

necessarily more useful than that of the clerk, the lawyer or the

shopkeeper. For every unnecessary distributing agent referred to above

several producing agents could be named whose work is useless or harmful

in the national economy. This I endeavoured to make clear in Chapter

11.]

[Footnote 56: "Condition of Labour," page 90.]

[Footnote 57: "Infantile Mortality," by Dr G. F. McCleary.]

[Footnote 58: "The Hygienics of Milk," "Edinburgh Medical Journal,"

1898.]

[Footnote 59: In a speech delivered to the students of the Crystal

Palace Company's School of Practical Engineering in 1905 the following

advice was given. I quote from the newspaper report: "Students should

cultivate the art of making friends through life. Wherever they were

they should try to make good friends, for such friends were always

useful when one wanted to obtain employment. Half the battle was won in

applying for a situation if the applicant had a friend on the board."

Excellent! "Be artful, sweet youth, and let who will be clever."]

CHAPTER XIX

THE AGED POOR

In "Riches and Poverty," edition 1905, I passed at this point to the

consideration of the cruellest phase of Poverty, the poverty of the

aged. Since 1905 Mr Asquith has given us an Old Age Pension Act, and it

is happily unnecessary to repeat in full the pleas which were advanced

in these pages in 1905. It is well, however, again to record the known

facts with regard to poverty in old age.

If we did not know our country, and had never encountered its poor in

the flesh, in what condition could we expect to find the aged labourer

in view of the terrible extent of the Error of Distribution? It is not

alone that the majority of our people have the slenderest incomes. To

narrow wages is in most cases added uncertainty of employment, the

greatest enemy of thrift, while the period during which the average

workman draws the full rate of wages recognized in his trade has ever

been short, and tends with the increased strenuousness of modern

industry to grow shorter.

There are about 2,100,000 persons aged 65 and upwards, in the United

Kingdom, but these are not divided between rich and poor in the

proportions shown in the frontispiece. We have to remember that the poor

are slain by their poverty. In the "comfortable" and "rich" classes the

span of life is much greater than in the case of the poor. It is

impossible to say precisely how the 2,100,000 persons are divided in

point of income, but probably, some 1,750,000 of them belong to the

classes whose incomes are below the income tax exemption limit. As to a

considerable proportion of them we have the clearest evidence of

grinding poverty.

In 1890 Mr Thomas Burt, M.P., moved for a parliamentary return showing

the number of paupers of 60 years of age and upwards, distinguishing

indoor from outdoor relief. It appears from this return that the total

number of paupers over 60 years of age in receipt of relief on August

1st, 1890 (excluding lunatics in asylums, vagrants and persons who were

only in receipt of relief constructively by reason of relief being given

to wives or children), was 286,867.

The number of those persons who were in receipt of indoor relief, the

number in receipt of outdoor relief, and their ages as stated, are given

in the table on the following page.

The notable fact which emerges is that of 286,867 paupers over 60, as

many as 245,687 were over 65. Old age as a cause of pauperism is

strikingly illustrated by a comparison of the two numbers. It is clear

that death at 64 would mercifully have saved over two hundred thousand

poor old men and women from the stigma of pauperism.

According to the census returns, in 1891, the following year, there were

1,372,974 persons (606,960 males and 766,014 females) at and over the

age of 65. On August 1st, 1890, the date of Mr Burt's return, therefore,

there were 245,687 persons out of about 1,372,000 persons 65 years old

and upwards or say 1 in 5½ in receipt of poor relief.

But Mr Burt's return related to the paupers relieved on one day only.

What ratio does the number of aged paupers relieved in one day bear to

the total number relieved in the course of the year?

PAUPERS OVER 60 YEARS OF AGE (ENGLAND AND WALES ONLY)

ON AUGUST 1ST, 1890

----------------+----------------------+------------------------+

| Indoor. | Outdoor. |

Ages. +------+--------+------+-------+--------+-------+

----------------+------+--------+------+-------+--------+-------+

65 to 70 | 9,468| 6,339 |15,807|10,567 | 35,866 | 46,433|

70 to 75 | 9,953| 6,856 |16,809|17,633 | 43,266 | 60,899|

75 to 80 | 7,086| 5,298 |12,384|16,474 | 32,021 | 48,495|

80 and over | 4,949| 4,803 | 9,752|12,456 | 22,652 | 35,108|

+------+--------+------+-------+--------+-------+

Total over 65 |31,456| 23,296 |54,752|57,130 |133,805 |190,935|

60 to 65 | 8,018| 5,354 |13,372| 5,959 | 21,849 | 27,808|

+------+--------+------+-------+--------+-------+

Total over 60 |39,474| 28,650 |68,124|63,089 |155,654 |218,743|

----------------+------+--------+------+-------+--------+-------+

----------------+------------------------

| Total Paupers.

Ages. +-------+--------+-------

| Males.|Females.| Total.

----------------+-------+--------+-------

65 to 70 | 20,035| 42,205 | 62,240

70 to 75 | 27,586| 50,122 | 77,708

75 to 80 | 23,560| 37,319 | 60,879

80 and over | 17,405| 27,455 | 44,860

+-------+--------+-------

Total over 65 | 88,588|157,101 |245,687

60 to 65 | 13,977| 27,203 | 41,180

+-------+--------+-------

Total over 60 |102,563|184,304 |286,867

----------------+-------+--------+-------

This question is answered by a further parliamentary return, asked for

in 1892 by Mr (afterwards Lord) Ritchie. This return shows for England

and Wales the number of persons of each sex aged 65 years and upwards,

and the number between 16 and 65, also the number of children under 16

years of age, in receipt of relief (_a_) on January 1st, 1892, and (_b_)

during the twelve months ended Lady Day 1892. As in Mr Burt's return,

vagrants and lunatics are not included. The return differs from Mr

Burt's, however, in distinguishing those persons in receipt of medical

relief only.

This return of Mr Ritchie's showed that while 700,746 paupers of all

ages were in receipt of relief on January 1st, 1892, the number relieved

during the year ended Lady Day 1892 was more than twice as great, viz.

1,573,074.[60]

Mr Ritchie's return relates to all paupers, whereas that of Mr Burt

related to the aged only. It is difficult to say which fact in Mr

Ritchie's return is the more saddening, the relief of 401,904 aged

paupers in a single year, or that in the same period 553,587 _children

under sixteen were pauperized_.

The following table (p. 276) summarizes the facts elicited by the return

as to the paupers relieved during twelve months. (It should be observed

that, of the 1,573,074 persons enumerated, 211,082 were in receipt of

medical relief only. Of the 401,904 paupers over 65, however, but 25,447

were in receipt of medical relief only.)

PAUPERS RELIEVED IN ENGLAND AND WALES DURING THE

TWELVE MONTHS ENDING LADY DAY 1892

-----------------+------------------------+--------------------------+

| Indoor. | Outdoor. |

Ages. +-------+--------+-------+-------+--------+---------+

-----------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+--------+---------+

65 and over | 68,490| 45,654 |114,144| 95,140|192,620 | 287,760|

16 to 65 |134,561| 97,723 |232,284|141,826|243,473 | 385,299|

Under 16 | | |111,782| | | 441,805|

-----------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+--------+---------+

Totals | | |458,210| | |1,114,864|

-----------------+-------+--------+-------+-------+--------+---------+

-----------------+--------------------------

| Total Paupers.

Ages. +-------+--------+---------

| Males.|Females.| Total.

-----------------+-------+--------+---------

65 and over |163,630| 238,274| 401,904

16 to 65 |276,387| 341,196| 617,583

Under 16 | | | 553,587

-----------------+-------+--------+---------

Totals | | |1,573,074

-----------------+-------+--------+---------

Comparing the number of paupers in England and Wales, as shown by the

figures on p. 276 with the census population of 1891, we get:

TOTAL PAUPERS IN 1891 COMPARED WITH TOTAL POPULATION

(ENGLAND AND WALES ONLY)

Total Paupers relieved 1,573,074

Total Population, Census 1891 29,000,000

Paupers per 1,000 54

Thus the paupers of all ages relieved in 1891 amounted to one in every

eighteen of the population of England and Wales.

What of those over 65? The facts are:

PAUPERS AGED 65 AND UPWARDS IN 1891 COMPARED WITH TOTAL POPULATION

OF THAT AGE (IN ENGLAND AND WALES ONLY)

Total Paupers aged 65 and over 401,904

Total Population aged 65 and over 1,372,900

Paupers per 1,000 292

_Thus of the population of England and Wales aged 65 and over in 1891,

one in every three was in receipt of poor relief!_

In 1899, and again in 1900, the Local Government Board published returns

relating to aged pauperism in those years, and Mr Burt, in 1903,

obtained a second return in continuation of that of 1891. We are thus

enabled to compare _one-day_ returns for five different periods and this

is done in the following table:

PAUPERS, INDOOR AND OUTDOOR, RELIEVED ON CERTAIN DAYS DURING A PERIOD

OF THIRTEEN YEARS (ENGLAND AND WALES ONLY)

Ratio of Paupers

Paupers Paupers 65 and over to

aged 16 aged 65 total population

and over. and over. of that age.

(Per Cent.)

1890 (1 Aug.) Not known 245,687 18.0

1892 (1 Jan.) 471,568 268,397 19.4

1899 (1 July) 469,939 278,718 18.7

1900 (1 Jan.) 494,600 286,929 19.2

1903 (1 Sept.) 490,513 284,265 18.3

[_Note._—In the Returns for 1892, 1899 and 1900 the numbers include

persons in receipt of relief constructively by reason of relief being

given to wives or children. In the Returns for 1890 and 1903 (Mr Burt's

returns) such persons are excluded.]

Apart from seasonal changes—the number of paupers is, of course, always

higher in the winter than in the summer—it will be seen that the

proportion of paupers over 65 years of age to the total population of

that age has not varied much. On August 1st, 1890, there were 245,687

paupers of 65 years and upwards, or 18 per cent. of the total population

of that age. On September 1st, 1903, there were 284,265 paupers of 65

and upwards, or 18.3 per cent. of the population of that age.

We have only the figures of the 1892 return to throw light upon the

number of aged paupers relieved during one year. If we assume that still

the same proportion of aged pauperism exists, viz.: 292 in each 1,000,

then, in the present year, out of a total population in the United

Kingdom aged 65 and upwards of about 2,100,000, as many as 613,200

persons are pauperized.

This number includes both indoor and outdoor paupers, and the ratio of

indoor and outdoor paupers varies greatly in different places because of

the varying policies of Boards of Guardians. But this point need not

detain us. Outdoor relief may in some cases be injudiciously given and

in other places most cruelly refused. The fact remains that, taking the

country as a whole, we have the clearest evidence of the existence of

613,000 exceedingly poor aged persons.

More important it is to remember that, for one poor person who obtains

either indoor or outdoor relief, several who justly might claim it

refuse to avail themselves of the tender mercies of the Poor Law. The

poor, as a rule, will exhaust every penny of their savings and pawn

every stick of their furniture before they seek the workhouse door.

Moreover, the amount of genuine charity bestowed by the poor upon the

poor is wonderful. If, then, there are 600,000 aged paupers either

inside workhouses or receiving outdoor relief in the course of the year,

we may be quite sure that at least as many more are as urgently in need

of succour, and obtain it by increasing the poverty of their poor

friends rather than by seeking from the Guardians the loaf, the 2s. 6d.,

and the insults which too often constitute outdoor relief.

The reader will see how probable it is that, of the 2,100,000 persons

aged 65 and upwards now living in the United Kingdom, fully 1,750,000

are in a condition of poverty which at the worst is pauperism and at the

best is sore need. Some 613,000 of them are certainly in receipt of poor

relief during the year. Probably another 600,000 are only deterred by

horror of the workhouse from recourse to the Guardians. For the

remaining third, as for the other two-thirds, the life which has for

three-score years been a constant struggle with poverty meets its

hardest and cruellest phase at the close.

A certain number of extraordinary men exist who contrive to rear a

family upon 30s. a week, and to save enough to provide for their old

age. These are the few who are not merely themselves of a most frugal

disposition, but who have chanced to bestow their affections upon a girl

as abstemious and as thrifty as themselves. A pair of such character,

blessed with perfect health and not more than two or three healthy

children, may contrive to meet first the fall of earnings after 45 or

50, and finally old age itself, with a light heart. That such cases are

rare will only surprise those who have never had occasion to practise

thrift. Only a little less rare than the comfortable aged workmen are

those who contrive to provide for themselves a tiny pension for their

declining years, through the continuous sick pay of friendly society or

trade union, or through the superannuation benefit of the latter. There

are only 38 trade unions which provide a superannuation benefit, and

these have a membership of about 600,000. They pay between them about

£200,000 a year in old age pensions to about 25,000 members. How small

this number appears when we compare it with the total number of persons

over 65 in the United Kingdom, which is about 2,100,000 at the present

time!

The value of the practice and experience of Trade Unions is very great.

Summing them up, I showed in "Riches and Poverty," edition 1905, that

workmen who earn their living, not by the mere exercise of physical

strength, but by skill, are usually used up by the age of 60, and not

infrequently by the age of 55. The latter age may be regarded as the

limit of full-earning capacity for the average skilled workman. After 55

he is in the greatest danger of dismissal when trade becomes slack. From

a considerable number of inquiries, I arrived at the conclusion that the

full wage-earning capacity of the average skilled workman begins at

25-30 and ends at 50-55. Before 25-30 a man is inexperienced and not

valued so highly as after that age. After 50-55 the age factor again

begins to tell, and the workman trembles at thought of the future. Each

grey hair is a deadly enemy to his livelihood.

If the skilled workman can hope to earn the full wages of his trade

(full wages, it should be remembered, means about 40 to 46 weeks' pay

per annum in most trades) for but 20 to 30 years, what of the men who

are hewers of wood and drawers of water? The answer is that after 45

good wages are difficult to obtain, and that for the rest of their

lives, if not mercifully ended by death, the earnings are poor in the

summer, and often at zero in the winter. If we look at the "occupations"

(with what irony the term is used in this connexion) of the inmates of

workhouses at the census of 1901 we find:

WORKHOUSE INMATES (OVER 10 YEARS OF AGE) AT CENSUS OF 1901

MALES

Clerks 1,079

Coachmen and grooms 1,848

Carmen, carriers 1,546

Seamen 2,052

Dock labourers 2,355

Agricultural labourers 9,469

Gardeners 1,232

Coal-miners 1,570

Blacksmiths 1,381

Carpenters, joiners 2,274

Bricklayers 1,212

Bricklayers' labourers 1,397

Painters, glaziers 2,487

Cotton operatives 1,218

Tailors 1,594

Shoemakers 3,061

Costermongers 1,521

General labourers 22,129

Other occupations 31,287

Without specified occupations or unoccupied 16,151

-------

106,863

FEMALES

Domestic servants 15,630

Charwomen 8,176

Laundry and washing service 4,554

Cotton operatives 2,128

Tailoresses 1,245

Milliners and dressmakers 1,642

Shirtmakers, seamstresses 2,814

Costermongers, hawkers 1,159

Other occupations 7,681

Without specified occupations or unoccupied 32,220

-------

77,249

-------

Total male and female 184,112

=======

The large proportion of "general labourers" is very

striking, while those describing themselves as dock, bricklayers' and

general labourers together form one-fourth of the whole. It will also be

noticed that 9,469 agricultural labourers "followed the plough to the

workhouse door." In passing, I may remark that in the list of female

"occupations" the presence of 15,000 domestic indoor servants should not

go unnoticed.

The almost universal approval which the proposal to grant Old Age

Pensions elicited would probably have carried it to fruition long before

the date of the Old Age Pension Act, 1908, but for one thing and one

thing only—the question of cost. It is amusing to note that the "Small

Committee of Persons Interested in the Controversy respecting Old Age

Pensions,"[61] practically a Committee of the Charity Organization

Society, who actively opposed Old Age Pensions in 1899-1902, placed in

the forefront of their "objections" the following:

"That the cost would be an insuperable difficulty, for to grant 5s. a

week at age 65 in respect of the population of England and Wales only,

would involve about £20,000,000 per annum for the present recipients,

and by 1941 the figure would have risen to £36,000,000."

In "Riches and Poverty," edition 1905, I said:

"Our examination of the National Income and the manner of its

distribution disposes of this objection. The question resolves itself

into this—Ought the 5,000,000 persons who have an aggregate income

approaching £900,000,000 to be taxed to the extent of £15,000,000 to

provide pensions for the aged poor? If the facts illustrated in the

frontispiece of this volume could be brought home to every elector there

would be no doubt whatever as to the decision of the country on the

subject. With the gross assessment to Income Tax at £900,000,000 the

expenditure of £15,000,000 on a small provision for the aged strikes

one, not as extravagant, but as an exceedingly modest proposal to

mitigate the evils of the Error of Distribution.

"I have named £15,000,000, and that is all that the scheme would cost.

It is not a universal superannuation scheme that is wanted; I find it

difficult to regard very seriously the proposal that, for fear of

"pauperization" we should pay every person, rich and poor, aged 65 and

upwards, the sum of 5s. per week. The idea appears to be that if the

scheme is not made universal some stigma will attach to those who are

pensioned. Surely this is an exaggerated view. The majority of those

aged 65 are poor, just as the majority of the whole population are poor.

If there is a stigma in such a case it attaches to those who go to form

the top part of my diagram—to those whose absorption of an undue share

of the national income connotes poverty for millions at the other end of

the scale.

"My own feeling is that we should make the pension, like the

superannuation benefit of Trades Unions, _claimable_ by those aged 65

and upwards who have not an income of more than £1 a week or property

valued at more than £250. We should then probably have to provide for

about 1,400,000 to 1,500,000 pensioners, at a cost of £18,000,000 to

£20,000,000. Administration would cost about £500,000 and we should save

about £4,000,000 in poor rates. Thus the net addition to taxation would

be about £15,000,000."

Mr Asquith's Old Age Pensions Act of 1908 made the receipt of an Old Age

Pension a citizen right, claimable by every person filling certain

statutory conditions. These conditions are:—

(1) That the person must have attained the age of 70.

(2) That he is a British subject.

(3) That his yearly income does not exceed £31, 10s.

The receipt of poor relief (medical relief excepted), habitual idleness,

lunacy or conviction for crime, are statutory disqualifications.

The amount of the pension varies from 1s. to 5s. per week according to

the following sliding scale:

Rate of

Income of Pensioner. Pension

per Week.

£ _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._

Not exceeding 21 0 0 5 0

£ _s._ _d._

Exceeds 21 0 0 but does not exceed 23 12 6 4 0

" 23 12 6 " " 26 5 0 3 0

" 26 5 0 " " 28 17 6 2 0

" 28 17 6 " " 31 10 0 1 0

" 31 10 0 No pension.

It was expressly stated in the Act that the disqualification of those

who had been in receipt of poor relief was to cease on December 31st,

1910, and the Budget of 1910-11 accordingly made provision for the

payment of the pensions to such paupers after that date.

The following statistics show the payments under the Act at December

31st, 1909 (the Act having come into force on January 1st, 1909):

THE FIRST YEAR'S WORKING OF MR ASQUITH'S OLD AGE PENSION ACT

Position at December 31st, 1909.

Number of Amount Payable

Pensioners. per Annum.

England 405,755 £5,043,332

Scotland 76,037 966,370

Wales 26,972 337,254

Ireland 183,976 2,335,764

------- ----------

692,740 £8,682,720

======= ==========

It was a defect in the Act that the possession of a certain amount of

property, as well as the possession of a certain income, was not made

the disqualification that I suggested it ought to be. A man with £500 of

property, yielding an income of £20 a year, ought _not_ to be qualified

for an Old Age Pension.

It is notable that, in introducing his Budget of 1908, Mr Asquith, in

expounding his scheme of pensions, estimated that it would cost not more

than £6,000,000 a year. As we have seen, the cost has proved to be very

much greater. It is fortunate that the under-estimation was made. If

Parliament had known that the cost would be £9,000,000 instead of

£6,000,000 Old Age Pensions might not now be law, so slowly is the

lesson learned that, to a nation of 44,000,000 people, with an aggregate

income of nearly £2,000,000,000, an expenditure of £9,000,000 is a small

matter, relatively as small as though the reader expended a few

shillings.

But it is, of course, a misnomer to speak of "expenditure" in this

connexion. The National Dividend is not diminished by the transfer of

£9,000,000 from the well-to-do to the poor. No more is _spent_ through

the transfer; all that takes place is a transfer of the power of call

for commodities, and a consequent change of the _form_ of a certain part

of the National Dividend, not a change of its _size_. The production of

luxuries is slightly—very slightly—stemmed; the production of

necessaries is slightly—very slightly—increased.

Mr Asquith's valuable Act needs to be amended by the reduction of the

pensionable age to 65 and to be supplemented by a State scheme for

sickness and invalidity insurance. (A minor defect which has revealed

itself is the continued disqualification of a man whose wife is in

receipt of relief.) The case for the amendment has been already

discussed in these pages; the case for invalidity insurance is that old

age is not the only determinant of dire poverty for the wage earner. The

facts adduced in Chapter 10 are eloquent of the need for succour which

exists in tens of thousands of cases.

[Footnote 60: The Royal Commission on the Poor Laws called for a similar

"year count" of paupers for 1907. It revealed that in that year of good

trade 1,709,436 persons were relieved by the Guardians in England and

Wales. This is 47.7 per 1,000 of the population. The later count fully

confirms that of 1892.]

[Footnote 61: This description is their own. See "Old Age Pensions"

(Macmillan & Co.) Introduction.]

CHAPTER XX

ADAM SMITH'S FIRST MAXIM OF TAXATION

Our next task shall be to examine the question of taxation in relation

to the Error of Distribution.

It is over one hundred and thirty years since Adam Smith penned his

famous maxims of taxation, the first and most important of which ran as

follows:

"The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of

the government as nearly as possible in proportion to their respective

abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively

enjoy under the protection of the state."

The first part of the proposition, which lays it down that contribution

towards the support of government should be in proportion to ability, is

interpreted by the second part to mean that contribution should be in

proportion to income. The second half of the maxim is therefore

subversive of the first.

Let us compare the ability to bear taxation of three persons whose

respective incomes are: A £50; B £500; and C £10,000. If we accept Adam

Smith's explanation of his own maxim, we should apply taxation in

proportion to income. Note the effect of a tax of 10 per cent. upon the

three incomes:

A £50 less 10 per cent. = £45

B 500 " " = 450

C 10,000 " " = 9,000

Most clearly we see that to A, with £1 a week, the loss of 10 per cent.,

or five week's income, is a most serious matter—a crushing burden. With

£500 per annum, however, B, after the loss of 10 per cent. of his

income, is still left with a revenue ten times as great as that of A.

The taxation in B's case is serious but not overwhelming. C, after the

loss by taxation of one-tenth of his income, is left with the handsome

income of £9,000 a year, a sum which is more than sufficient to sustain

him in luxury. The loss in the third case is clearly a shadowy one; a

rich man has been rendered not quite so rich.

Thus, by taxing in proportion to income, we impose upon the poor man a

crushing burden; upon the small income a serious burden; upon the large

income a burden scarcely to be felt.

Obviously, then, the second part of Adam Smith's maxim is not a true

illustration of the doctrine of equality of sacrifice which is involved

in the use of the term "ability."

This has been partially recognized in our present system of taxation.

Those with incomes exceeding £160 per annum are made to pay a tax which

is not imposed upon those with less than that income. Further, the

income tax is roughly graduated. A graduated death duty is also imposed

in order to obtain a larger contribution from the rich than from the

poor.

I now urge that the doctrine of equality of sacrifice, which has already

been partially recognized, should be considered in relation to all the

facts treated in Book I.

We have seen that the great mass of the people, who do the greater part

of the work of the nation, who produce the material commodities without

which life could not be supported, receive so small a share of the total

product that while 39,000,000 persons enjoy an income of £911,000,000,

about 5,500,000 persons receive an income of £930,000,000. If then, we

had to raise £200,000,000 per annum by taxation and were to raise the

whole from the second class, the result would be:

5,500,000 would have £930,000,000, } £730,000,000 or

less £200,000,000 } £133 per head.

39,000,000 would have { £911,000,000 or

{ £23 per head.

The Error of Distribution is so great that, were the whole taxation

levied upon those above the line of £160 per annum, the comfortable and

rich classes would still be left about six times as rich as those below

that line.

An unanswerable case is thus made out for the repeal of the whole of the

customs duties on tea, coffee, cocoa, dried fruits and sugar, which bear

almost entirely upon the poorer classes. A heavy tax on tea or sugar is

a matter of indifference to the rich; to the poor it means a

considerable privation. Our indirect food taxes are a denial of the

doctrine of ability.

The customs and excise duties on alcoholic liquors must of course remain

on moral grounds, and the tobacco duty might well remain for the

present. We should thus tax the working classes through their luxuries

alone, while the workman who dispensed with drink and smoked in

moderation would be practically untaxed. The general recognition of this

fact, combined with the cheapening of tea, coffee and cocoa, would not

be without its effect upon the nation's drink bill, and in so far as its

recognition reduced our revenue we could count it gain.

Reverting to the facts illustrated in the frontispiece, the effect of

the abolition of the food duties would be slight in relation to the

extraordinary inequalities of income, but a just and certain step,

nevertheless, in the direction of amelioration. Just as a small burden

is great to a narrow income, so a small relief is a great boon, and

fully 10,000,000 of our people would feel in an appreciable degree the

removal of the food duties. The step has been urged by reformers for

many years; considered in relation to the Error of Distribution it is

seen to be an exceedingly small measure of justice, which needs little

rhetoric to enforce its claims.

To proceed with the application of the doctrine of ability to taxation

in view of the facts as to the National Income, we come to the

consideration of the Income Tax and Death Duties.

CHAPTER XXI

THE MAIN INSTRUMENT OF TAXATION

Through the income tax we go directly to the person upon whom we desire

to levy taxation, and take from him such portion of his earnings or

other profits as we consider to be his just contribution to the revenue.

Through the income tax we can, if we care to do so, cause each subject

of the State to contribute towards the expenses of government according

to his ability.

It is the purpose of this chapter to show that the income tax could be

so amended that, so far from being counted an obnoxious impost, it would

be regarded as a just and proper instrument of taxation.

* * * * *

It is generally believed that the British Income Tax was originated by

Pitt in 1798. As a matter of fact, however, the direct taxation of

incomes in the United Kingdom dates back many hundreds of years. For the

purposes of this work, I do not propose to trace the history of the

subject to an earlier date than 1692.

The Property and Income Tax imposed in that year is commonly known as

the "Land-Tax," and this name has given rise to a great deal of

misunderstanding.

In their twenty-eighth report (1885) the Commissioners of Inland

Revenue, in giving a detailed description of the Land-Tax of 1692, point

out that the impost "was in fact a Property and Income Tax, and moreover

that personal estate was quite as much the object of the charge as

land." So few people are aware of these facts that it may be well to set

out the actual provisions of the Act, as described by the Commissioners:

It (the Act of 1692) is entitled "An Act for granting to their Majesties

an aid of four shillings in the pound for one year for carrying on a

vigorous war against France"; and the second section enacts, "That every

person, body politic and corporate, etc., having any estate in ready

monies or in any debts owing to them or having any estate in goods,

wares, merchandise, or other chattels, or personal estate whatsoever

within this realm or without shall pay yield and pay unto their

Majesties four shillings in the pound according to the true yearly value

thereof; that is to say, for every hundred pounds of such ready money

and debts, and for every hundred pounds' worth of such goods, wares,

etc., or other personal estate the sum of four and twenty shillings."

The third section imposes a duty of four shillings in the pound upon the

profits and salaries of all persons having any office or employment of

profit (except naval and military officers).

And then the fourth section proceeds thus, "And to the end a further aid

and supply for their Majesties' occasions may be raised by a charge upon

all lands, tenements, and hereditaments with as much equality and

indifferency as is possible by an equal pound rate of four shillings for

every twenty shillings of the true yearly value, be it enacted that all

manors, messuages, lands and tenements, and all quarries, mines, etc.,

tithes, tolls, etc., and all hereditaments, of what nature soever they

be, shall be charged with the sum of four shillings for every twenty

shillings of the full yearly value."

The rules for assessments follow the same order, and show that the

charge on personal estate was as much to be attended to as that on land.

Thus the assessors are directed in the first place to bring in

certificates of the names of every person dwelling within their

districts, "and of the substance and values of them in ready money,

goods, chattels, and other personal estate." Every person is to be rated

for personal estate at the place where he shall reside, and, if not a

householder, at the place where he resides at the execution of the Act,

or if out of the realm, where he was last resident; "and for the better

discovery of personal estates," every householder is to give an account

of his lodgers.

But although the Act of 1692 was the first of those so-called Land-Tax

Acts, it was not until 1697 that the tax was imposed precisely in the

form which has been preserved to the present day, that is to say, as a

fixed sum for the whole kingdom, and to be raised in quotas specified in

the Act for each county, city or borough therein named. That Act was

renewed every year, with scarcely any difference in its provisions as to

the mode of assessment, and although the amounts charged upon the

counties, etc., varied according to the total sum required from the

kingdom, they were always fixed in due proportions to the original

quotas. The last annual Act, so far as land was concerned, was passed in

1797.

Now it is a remarkable circumstance that these Acts of 1697 and 1797

appear to mark, more strongly than before, the taxation of personal

estate as the primary object of the law.

After the clauses imposing upon goods, wares, merchandise, etc., and

upon pensions and offices, the fixed charge of four shillings in the

pound towards raising the quotas, that relating to land appears to treat

it as a subsidiary contributor, as it were, and for the purpose of

making up the sum due to the Exchequer after exhausting the other

resources. The words are: "And to the end the full and entire sums by

this Act charged upon the several counties, etc., may be fully and

completely raised and paid; be it enacted, that all lands, etc., shall

be charged by a pound rate towards the said several sums by this Act

imposed."

How the duty on personal estate was levied, or what was its proportion

in the quotas, we have no means of knowing. All that we do know is that

in Mr Pitt's time it had dwindled nearly to nothing; and that the tax

annually voted under the name of land tax had become a land tax in

reality. Thus we find in an assessment for the Tower Division in 1799

that the sum charged for personal estate was only £227, while the charge

for lands, etc., is £29,964; and in one of the few accounts of later

transactions which remain to us, that for the year 1823, we are

presented with a return of £5,416, 10s. 0d. as the ludicrous result of a

tax at one per cent. on the capital value of the personalty of Great

Britain.

The Commissioners go on to remark that it seems almost incredible that

year after year an Act should have been passed containing the most

minute directions for the assessment of personal estate, and yet that

nothing which could be called an assessment should have been made. They

suggest that "Perhaps the explanation may be found in another

peculiarity in the administration of this tax, the tendency to regard it

as a _fixed charge_ upon the subjects on which it was originally levied.

That this has been the case with land, both before and since 1797, is

well known, and if the same rule was applied to personalty it is easy to

conceive that, as the persons originally charged moved out of the

parish, or became destitute, or otherwise unassessable, their proportion

of the tax was shifted to the land as the readiest means of collecting

it."

A certain amount of personalty was still assessed in the time of Pitt,

however, as may be gathered from the following figures from the roll of

the Tower Division.

"LAND-TAX." ABSTRACT OF DUPLICATES FOR THE TOWER DIVISION

------------------+-------------------+-------------------

| Quotas for the |

| respective |

Charge for | years 1698 and |

the year | 1699, under | Quota

1693. | 9 & 10 and | for 1702.

4s. Aid. | 10 & 11 |

| William III. |

| 3s. Aid. |

------------------+-------------------+-------------------

£ _s._ _d._ | £ _s._ _d._ | £ _s._ _d._

34,057 5 5 | 25,542 19 0¾ | 34,041 12 10

------------------+-------------------+-------------------

-------------------------------------------------------

Quota for 1799.

------------------+----------------+-------------------

| |

| Personal | Pensions

Lands, etc. | Estate. | and

| | Offices.

------------------+----------------+-------------------

£ _s._ _d._ | £ _s._ _d._ | £ _s._ _d._

29,964 15 0½ | 227 15 5 | 2,320 2 4½

------------------+----------------+-------------------

This specimen also shows how the original assessments of 1692 were

preserved until the time when, in 1798, over one hundred years after,

Pitt made provisions for the redemption of the old tax, and

simultaneously introduced a new Property and Income Tax based upon

better assessments.

Unaware of the real nature of the so-called "Land-Tax" and as it would

also appear, of the present "Property and Income Tax," it is often

suggested by fiscal reformers that the old Land-Tax of 1692 should be

reimposed upon present land revenues. Those who make the suggestion do

not realize that what they desire has already been done and is actually

in practice at this moment.

The old "Land-Tax" and the present "Income" Tax

thus compare:—

The "Land-Tax" of 1692.

Section 2: Every Person ... having any estate in ready monies or in any

debts owing to them or having any estate in goods, wares, merchandise

or other chattels, or personal estate whatsoever ... shall yield and

pay four shillings in the pound according to the true yearly value

thereof.

Section 3: All persons holding any public office or employment of

profit (except military and naval officers) and their clerks, etc.,

shall pay four shillings in the pound.

Section 4: And to the End, a further aid and supply for their

Majesties' occasions may be raised by a charge upon all lands,

tenements and hereditaments ... by an equal pound rate of four

shillings ... be it enacted that all manors, messuages, lands and

tenements, and all quarries, mines, etc., tithes, tolls, etc. ... shall

be charged with the sum of four shillings for every twenty shillings of

the full yearly value.

The Present "Property and Income" Tax.

Schedule D taxes the profits of trades and professions and from various

forms of personal property.

Schedule E taxes the salaries of all who hold public offices or

employments, whether they be officials or clerks.

Schedule A taxes the income from "all manors, messuages, lands and

tenements, and all quarries, mines, etc., tithes, tolls, etc."

It is also remarkable that whereas Land and Houses are placed in

Schedule A, the first branch of our Income Tax, the so-called Land-Tax

of 1692 placed lands and houses in its third category. The Act of 1692,

moreover, as we have seen, made the taxation of personalty its first

aim, and brought in a charge on land, houses and other fixed property to

make up any deficiency.

With our modern Income Tax, fortunately, personalty does not escape as

it seems to have done in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but

it is still true that a great deal of personal income evades taxation,

while it is impossible for fixed property to elude the assessors.

I have taken the trouble to set out the foregoing details at some length

because the fact that Schedule A of the Income Tax, like Section 4 of

the Act of 1692, is a Land-Tax, appears to have escaped the attention of

many of those who desire to tax the unearned increment which so often

accrues to the owners of land. At the present moment, the owners of land

contribute 14 pence in the pound of its annual revenue to Imperial

Taxation under Schedule A. In the case of a small landowner with an

income of £750 a year that may be enough. In the case of a great

landowner with a rent roll of £20,000 a year it is certainly too little.

If, then, we would justly tax the income of those who derive unearned

revenue from land, we must graduate our income tax. In doing so,

fortunately, we shall not tax merely one form of unearned increment. The

conclusive proof of unearned income is the possession of a great income.

Whether it arises from rent, or from interest, or from the direct

taxation of labour is a secondary consideration. Whether its owner has

bought broad acres with profits drawn from the exertions of others, or

whether he has bought railway stock or foreign investments with the

proceeds of the sale of broad acres, we need not inquire. The great

income, the fact that the individual who receives it is one of the small

number of people who enjoy one-third of the entire income of the

country, is sufficient proof of "ability" to contribute generously to

the revenues of what should be the rich government of a rich State. And

it is difficult to imagine a rich man so wanting in that social instinct

which we call patriotism that, when once his extraordinary position in

relation to his fellows is made clear to him, he will not consent freely

to make such contribution.

* * * * *

The Income Tax, as it now exists, is an instrument of extraordinary

clumsiness and complexity. An intelligent foreigner, coming freshly to

the examination of its curious provisions, would be driven to the

conclusion that a junta of bureaucrats, intent upon hiding the mysteries

of statecraft from the knowledge of the vulgar, had of set purpose

wrapped its machinery and intention in every device of obscurement which

perverted ingenuity could suggest.

In "Riches and Poverty," edition 1905, I gave an account of the Income

Tax as it then stood. I reproduce the account in order to make the

subsequent alterations clearer.

Incomes, from whatever source arising, which do not exceed £160 per

annum, are entirely exempt from the tax.

Incomes between £160 and £700 are allowed certain abatements which are

equivalent to a rough graduation of the tax. The following table shows

the nature of the abatements:—

INCOME TAX ABATEMENTS

Less than one-half of the breadwinners of Bournville are employed by Mr