Britain For The British Part 27

CHAPTER XV

THE SURPLUS LABOUR MISTAKE

Many non-Socialists believe that the cause of poverty is "surplus labour," or over-population, and they tell us that if we could reduce our population we should have no poor.

If this were true, we should find that in thinly populated countries the workers fare better than in countries where the population is more dense.

But we do not find anything of the kind.

The population of Ireland is thin. There are more people in London than in all Ireland. Yet the working people of Ireland are worse off than the working people of England.

The population of Scotland is thinner than that of England, but wages rule higher in England.

In Australia there is a large country and a small population, but there is plenty of poverty.

In the Middle Ages the entire population of England would only be a few millions--say four or five millions--whereas it is now nearly thirty millions. Yet the working cla.s.ses are very much better off to-day than they were in the eighth and ninth centuries.

Reduce the population of Britain to one million and the workers would be in no better case than they are now. Increase the population to sixty millions and the workers will be no worse off--at least so far as wages are concerned.

I will give you the reason for this in a few words, using an ill.u.s.tration which used to serve me for the same purpose in one of my lectures.

No one will deny that all wealth--whether food, tools, clothing, furniture, machines, arms, or houses--comes from _the land_.

For we feed our cattle and poultry on the land, and get from the land corn, malt, hops, iron, timber, and every other thing we use, except fish and a few sea-drugs; and we could not get fish without nets and boats, nor make nets and boats without fibre and wood and metals.

Stand a decanter and a tumbler on a bare table. Call the table Britain, call the decanter a landlord, and call the tumbler a labourer.

Now no man can produce wealth without land. If, then, Lord de Canter owns all the land, and Tommy Tumbler owns none, how is Tommy Tumbler to get his living?

He will have to work for Lord de Canter, and he will have to take the wage his lordship offers him.

Now you cannot say that Britain is over-populated with only two men, nor that it is suffering from a superfluity of labour when there is only one labourer. And yet you observe that with only two men in the country one is rich and the other poor.

How, then, will a reduction of the population prevent poverty?

Look at this diagram. A square board, with two men on it; one is black and one is white.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 3.]

Call the board England, the black p.a.w.n a landlord, and the white p.a.w.n a labourer.

Let me repeat that every useful thing comes out of the land, and then ask this simple question: If _all_ the land--the whole of England--belongs to the black man, how is the white man going to get his living?

You see, although the population of England consists of only two men, if one of these men owns _all_ the land, the other man must starve, or steal, or beg, or work for wages.

Now, suppose our white man works for wages--works for the black man--what is going to regulate the wages? Will the fact that there is only one beggar make that beggar any richer? If there were ten white men, and _all_ the land belonged to the black man, the ten whites would be as well off as the one white was, for the landowner could find them all work, and could get them to work for just as much as they could live on.

No: that idea of raising wages by reducing the population is a mistake.

Do not the workers _make_ the wealth? They do. And is it not odd to say that we will increase the wealth by reducing the number of the wealth makers?

But perhaps you think the workers might get a bigger _share_ of the wealth if there were fewer of them.

How? Our black man owns all England. He has 100 whites working for him at wages just big enough to keep them alive. Of those 100 whites 50 die.

Will the black man raise the wages of the remaining 50? Why should he?

There is no reason why he should. But there is this reason why he should not, viz. that as he has now only 50 men working for him, he will only be half as rich as he was when he had 100 men working for him. But the land is still his, and the whites are still in his power. He will still pay them just as much as they can live on, and no more.

But you may say that if the workers decreased and the masters did not decrease in numbers, wages must rise.

Suppose you have in the export cotton trade 100 masters and 100,000 workers. Half the workers die. You have now 100 masters and 50,000 workers.

Then you may say that, as foreign countries would still want the work of 100,000 workers, the 100 masters would compete as to which got the biggest orders, and so wages would rise.

But bear in mind two things. First, if the foreign workers were as numerous as before, the English masters could import hands; second, if the foreign workers died out as fast as the English, there would only be half as many foreigners needing shirts, and so the trade would keep pace with the decrease in workers, and the wages would remain as they were.

To improve the wages of the English workers the price of cotton goods must rise or the profits of the masters must be cut down.

Neither of these things depends on the number of the population.

But now go back to our England with the three men in it. Here is the black landlord, rich and idle; and the two white workers, poor and industrious. One of the workers dies. The landlord gets less money, but the remaining worker gets no more. _There are only two men in all England, and one of them is poor._

But suppose we have one black landlord and 100 white workers, and the workers adopt Socialism. Then every man of the 101 will have just what he earns, and _all_ that he earns, and all will be free men.

Thus you see that under Socialism a big population will be better off than the smallest population can be under non-Socialism.

But, the non-Socialist objects, wages are ruled by compet.i.tion, and must fall when the supply of labour exceeds the demand; and when that happens it is because the country is over-populated.

I admit that the supply of labour often exceeds the demand, and that when it does, wages may come down. But I deny that an excess of labour over the demand for labour proves the country to be over-populated. What it does prove is that the country is badly governed and under-cultivated.

A country is over-populated when its soil cannot yield food for its people. At present our population is about 40,000,000 and our soil would support more than double the number.

The country, then, is not over-populated; it is badly governed.

There are, let us say, more shoemakers and tailors than there is employment for. But are there no bare feet and ill-clothed backs?

Certainly. The bulk of our workers are not properly shod or clothed. It is not, then, true to say that we have more tailors and shoemakers than we require; but we ought to say instead that our tailors and shoemakers cannot live by their trades because the rest of the workers are too poor to pay them. Now, why are the rest of the workers too poor to buy boots and clothing? Is it because there are too many of them? Let us take an instance: the farm labourer. He cannot afford boots. Why? He is too poor. Why? Not because there are too many farm labourers,--for there are too few,--but because the wages of farm labourers are low. Why are they low? Because agriculture is neglected, and because rents are high. So we come back to my original statement, that the evil is due to the private ownership of land.

The many are poor because the few are rich.

But, again, it may be a.s.serted that we have always about half a million of men unemployed, and that these men prove the existence of superfluous labour.

Not at all. There are half a million of men out of work, but there are many millions of acres idle. Abolish private ownership of land, and the nation, being now owner of _all_ land, can at once find work for that so-called "superfluous labour."

All wealth comes from the land. All wealth must be got from the land by labour. Given a sufficient quant.i.ty of land, one man can produce from the land more wealth than one man can consume. Therefore, as long as there is a sufficiency of land there can be no such thing as "superfluous labour," and no such thing as over-population. Given machinery and combination, and probably one man can produce from the land enough wealth for ten to consume. Why, then, should there be any such thing as poverty?

One fundamental truth of economics is that every able-bodied and willing worker is worth more than his keep.