Britain For The British Part 19

Taking soap as an example, it requires a purchaser of this commodity to expend a shilling in obtaining sixpennyworth of it, the additional sixpence being requisite to cover the cost of advertising, travelling, etc. It requires him to expend 1s. 1d. to obtain twopennyworth of pills for the same reason. For a sewing machine he must, if spending 7 on it, part with 4 of this amount on account of unnecessary cost; and so on in the case of all widely advertised articles. In the price of less-advertised commodities there is, in like manner, included as unnecessary cost a long string of middlemen's profits and expenses. It may be necessary to treat of these later, but for the present suffice it to say that in the price of goods as sold by retail the margin of unnecessary cost ranges from threepence to tenpence in the shilling, and taking an average of one thing with another, it may be safely stated that one-half of the price paid is rendered necessary simply through the foolish and inconvenient manner in which the business is carried on.

All this expense would be saved by State or Munic.i.p.al production for use. The New York Milk Trust, I understand, on its formation dispensed with the services of 15,000 men.

You may ask what is to become of these men, and of the immense numbers of other men, now uselessly employed, who would not be needed under Socialism.

Well! What are these men now doing? Are they adding to the wealth of the nation? No. Are they not doing work that is unnecessary to the nation?

Yes. Are they not now being paid wages? Yes.

Then, since their work is useless, and since they are now being paid, is it not evident that under Socialism we could actually pay them their full wages for doing _nothing_, and still be as well off as we are now?

But I think under Socialism we could, and should, find a very great many of them congenial and useful work.

Under the "Trusts" they will be thrown out of work, and it will be n.o.body's business to see that they do not starve.

Yes: Socialism would displace labour. But does not non-Socialism displace labour?

Why was the linotype machine adopted? Because it was a saving of cost.

What became of the compositors? They were thrown out of work. Did anybody help them?

Well, Socialism would save cost. If it displaces labour, as the machine does, should that prevent us from adopting Socialism?

Socialism would organise labour, and leave no man to starve.

But will the Trusts do that? No. And the Trusts are coming; the Trusts which will swallow up the small firms and destroy compet.i.tion; the Trusts which will use their monopolies not to lower prices, but to make profits.

You will have your choice, then, between the grasping and grinding Trust and the beneficent Munic.i.p.ality.

Can any reasonable, practical, hard-headed man hesitate for one moment over his choice?

CHAPTER X

FOREIGN TRADE AND FOREIGN FOOD

We have heard a great deal lately about the danger of losing our foreign trade, and it has been very openly suggested that the only hope of keeping our foreign trade lies in reducing the wages of our British workers. Sometimes this idea is wrapped up, and called "reducing the cost of production."

Now, if we must have foreign trade, and as much of it as we have now, and if we can only keep it by competing against foreign dealers in price, then it is true that we must try to reduce the cost of production.

But as there are more ways of killing a dog besides that of choking him with b.u.t.ter, so there are other ways of reducing the cost of production besides that of reducing the wages of our British workers.

But on that question I will speak in the next chapter. Here I want to deal with foreign trade and foreign food.

It is very important that every worker in the kingdom should understand the relations of our foreign trade and our native agriculture.

The creed of the commercial school is that manufactures _pay_ us better than agriculture; so that by making goods for export and buying food from abroad we are doing good business.

The idea is, that if by making cloth, cutlery, and other goods, we can buy more food than we can produce at home with the same amount of labour, it _pays_ us to let the land go out of cultivation and make Britain the "workshop of the world."

Now, a.s.suming that we _can_ keep our foreign trade, and a.s.suming that we can get more food by foreign trade than we could produce by the same amount of work, is it quite certain that we are making a good bargain when we desert our fields for our factories?

Suppose men _can_ earn more in the big towns than they _could_ earn in the fields, is the difference _all_ gain?

Rents and prices are higher in the towns; the life is less healthy, less pleasant. It is a fact that the death-rates in the towns are higher, that the duration of life is shorter, and that the stamina and physique of the workers are lowered by town life and by employment in the factories.

And there is another very serious evil attached to the commercial policy of allowing our British agriculture to decay, and that is the evil of our dependence upon foreign countries for our food.

Of every 30 bushels of wheat we require in Britain, more than 23 bushels come from abroad. Of these 23 bushels 19 bushels come from America, and nearly all the rest from Russia.

You are told at intervals--when more money is wanted for battle-ships--that unless we have a strong fleet we shall, in time of war, be starved into surrender.

But the plain and terrible truth is that even if we have a perfect fleet, and keep entire control of the seas, we shall still be exposed to the risk of almost certain starvation during a European war.

Nearly four-fifths of our bread come from Russia and America. Suppose we are at war with France and Russia. What will happen? Will not the corn dealers in America put up the price? Will not the Russians stop the export of corn from their ports? Will not the French and Russian Governments try to corner the American wheat?

Then one-seventh of our wheat would be stopped at Russian ports, and the American supply, even if it could be safely guarded to our sh.o.r.es, would be raised to double or treble the present price.

What would our millions of poor workers do if wheat went up to 75s. or 100s. a quarter?

And every other article of food would go up in price at the same time: tea, coffee, sugar, meat, canned goods, cheese, would all double their prices.

And we must not forget that we import millions of pounds' worth of eggs, b.u.t.ter, and cheese from France, all of which would be stopped.

Nor is that all. Do we not pay for our imported food in exported goods?

Well, besides the risk and cost of carrying raw material to this country and manufactured goods to other countries across the seas, we should lose at one blow all our French and Russian trade.

That means that with food at famine prices many of our workers would be out of work or on short time.

The result would be that in less than half a year there would be 1,000,000 unemployed, and ten times that number on the borders of starvation.

And all these horrors might come upon us without a single shot being fired by our enemies. Talk about invasion! In a big European war we should be half beaten before we could strike a blow, and even if our fleets were victorious in a dozen battles we must starve or make peace.

Or suppose such a calamity as war with America! The Americans could close their ports to food and raw material, and stop half our food and a large part of our trade at one blow. And so we should be half beaten before a sword was drawn.

All these dangers are due to the commercial plan of sacrificing agriculture to trade. All these dangers must be placed to the debit side of our foreign trade account.

But apart from the dangers of starvation in time of war, and apart from all the evils of the factory system and the bad effects of overcrowding in the towns, it has still to be said that foreign trade only beats agriculture as long as it pays so well that we can buy more food with our earnings than we could ourselves produce with the same amount of labour.

Are we quite sure that it pays us as well as that _now_? And if it does pay as well as that now, can we hope that it will go on paying as well for any length of time.

In the early days of our great trade the commercial school wished Britain to be the "workshop of the world"; and for a good while she was the workshop of the world.

But now a change is coming. Other nations have opened world-workshops, and we have to face compet.i.tion.

France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, and America are all eager to take our coveted place as general factory, and China and j.a.pan are changing swiftly from customers into rival dealers.