British Socialism Part 33

What const.i.tutes the value of metal money? Its intrinsic value. Now I ask you: Does paper which represents the foremost of the possessions of a nation such as France not possess all the characteristics of intrinsic and generally accepted value which metal money possesses?"[764] The "a.s.signats" speedily fell to a discount, although dealing in them at a discount was made punishable with twenty years'

imprisonment with hard labour,[765] and they fell ultimately to waste-paper value. A pair of boots worth thirty francs in gold cost 10,000 francs in paper. On paper all were immensely rich. Yet the ma.s.ses were starving. Unfortunately people cannot live by consuming unlimited quant.i.ties of credit notes. They can become prosperous neither by robbing the rich nor by calling a shilling a sovereign, but only by producing more. Greater wealth means simply increased consumption, and increased consumption, unless based on increased production, can only be effected by intrenching upon and diminishing the national capital, the national reserve store of food, clothing, tools, &c., and thus causing widespread misery and starvation.

FOOTNOTES:

[751] Bebel, _Woman in the Past, Present, and Future_, p. 192.

[752] Leatham, _Socialism and Character_, p. 90.

[753] Blatchford, _Merrie England_, p. 100.

[754] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 103.

[755] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 157.

[756] Kautsky, _The Social Revolution_, p. 14.

[757] Jowett, _The Socialist and the City_, p. 44.

[758] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 57.

[759] McLachlan, _The Tyranny of Usury_, p. 1.

[760] _Ibid._ pp. 10, 17.

[761] _How to Finance Munic.i.p.al Enterprises_, pp. 3-5.

[762] McLachlan, _The Tyranny of Usury_, p. 20.

[763] _Ibid._

[764] _Nouvelle Biographie Generale_, vol. x.x.xv. p. 39.

[765] Roscher, _System_, p. 227.

CHAPTER XXI

SOME SOCIALIST VIEWS ON FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION

In his thoughtful book on Socialism, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, M.P., the Socialist leader, attributes the rise of the Socialist movement in great Britain to various causes, one of which is "the reaction against Manchesterism."[766]

Socialists, generally speaking, are opposed to Free Trade. Neither the moderate nor the revolutionary sections of British Socialism have a good word to say for it. The Socialist leaders, looking at the question of Free Trade and Protection from the worker's point of view, have arrived with Lecky at the conclusion that the whole Liberal Free Trade agitation is one of the greatest political impostures which the world has witnessed,[767] a view which, by the by, was also expressed by Bismarck.[768]

Socialists are not under any illusion as to the causes which led to the introduction of Free Trade into Great Britain, and they sneer at the humanitarian cant with which its promoters successfully surrounded it. One of the leading Socialist books states with regard to this point: "Protection was no longer needed by the manufacturers, who had supremacy in the world-market, unlimited access to raw material, and a long start of the rest of the world in the development of machinery and in industrial organisation. The landlord cla.s.s, on the other hand, was absolutely dependent on Protection. The triumph of Free Trade therefore signifies economically the decay of the old landlord cla.s.s pure and simple, and the victory of capitalism. The capitalist cla.s.s was originally no fonder of Free Trade than the landlords. It destroyed in its own interest the woollen manufacture in Ireland, and it would have throttled the trade of the colonies had it not been for the successful resistance of Ma.s.sachusetts and Virginia. It was Protectionist so long as it suited its purpose to be so. But when cheap raw material was needed for its looms, and cheap bread for its workers; when it feared no foreign compet.i.tor, and had established itself securely in India, in North America, in the Pacific; then it demanded Free Trade."[769] "Protection at home was needless to manufacturers who beat all their foreign rivals, and whose very existence was staked on the expansion of their exports. Protection at home was of advantage to none but to the producers of articles of food and other raw materials, to the agricultural interest, which, under the then existing circ.u.mstances in England, meant the receivers of rent, the landed aristocracy."[770]

The Free Trade manufacturers, who were chiefly interested in cheapness of production, cared little what became of the workers. "The individualist devotees of _laisser faire_ used to teach us that when restrictions were removed, free compet.i.tion would settle everything.

Prices would go down, and fill the 'consumer' with joy unspeakable; the fittest would survive, and as for the rest--it was not very clear what would become of them, and it really didn't matter."[771]

The doctrines and the boasts of the Free Traders are usually treated by the Socialists with contempt. "Cobdenites ascribe every known or imagined improvement in commerce, and the condition of the ma.s.ses, to Free Trade. Things are better than they were fifty years ago: Free Trade was adopted fifty years ago. _Ergo_--there you are. There is not a word about the development of railways and steamships, about improved machinery, about telegraphs, the cheap post and telephones, about education and better facilities of travel."[772]

The unsoundness of the fundamental doctrine of Free Trade, "Buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market," has frequently been exposed by Socialists. Mr. Blatchford, for instance, in a book of his of which more than a million copies have been sold gives prominence to Cobden's p.r.o.nouncement in the House of Commons in which he expounded the celebrated maxim: Buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market: "To buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest, what is the meaning of the maxim? It means that you take the article which you have in the greatest abundance and with it obtain from others that of which they have the most to spare; so giving to mankind the means of enjoying the fullest abundance of earth's goods."[773] Mr. Blatchford then comments upon Cobden's doctrine as follows: "Let us reduce these fine phrases to figures. Suppose America can sell us wheat at _30s._ a quarter, and suppose ours costs _32s. 6d._ a quarter. That is a gain of 1/15th in the cost of wheat. We get a loaf for _3d._ instead of having to pay _3-1/4d._ That is all the fine phrases mean. What do we lose? We lose the beauty and health of our factory towns; we lose annually some twenty thousand lives in Lancashire alone; we are in constant danger of great strikes; we are reduced to the meanest shifts and the most violent acts of piracy and slaughter to 'open up markets' for our goods; we lose the stamina of our people, and we lose our agriculture."[774]

Most Socialists recognise that under the Free Trade _regime_ Great Britain has sacrificed her safety and her strength to profit. "Did you ever consider what it involved, this ruin of British agriculture?

Don't you see that if we lose our power to feed ourselves we destroy the advantages of our insular position?"[775] "Don't you see that the people who depend on foreigners for their food are at the mercy of any ambitious statesman who chooses to make war upon them? And don't you think that is rather a stiff price to pay to get a farthing off the loaf? No nation can be secure unless it is independent; no nation can be independent unless it is based upon agriculture."[776] "We must buy wheat from America with cotton goods; but first of all we must buy raw cotton with which to make those goods. We are therefore entirely dependent upon foreigners for our existence."[777]

"The present national ideal is to become 'The workshop of the world.'

That is to say, the British people are to manufacture goods for sale to foreign countries, and in return for those goods are to get more money than they could obtain by developing the resources of their own country for their own use. My ideal is that each individual should seek his advantage in co-operation with his fellows, and that the people should make the best of their own country before attempting to trade with other people's."[778] "The Free Traders tell me that under their glorious system of free exchange nations naturally occupy themselves in those industries which produce the most wealth. Thus, if Great Britain, by employing a million men in growing corn, can produce _50,000,000l._ a year, while she can produce _51,000,000l._ by employing the men in getting coal. Great Britain will 'naturally'

employ those men in getting coal! Sending her coal abroad, Great Britain can get _1,000,000l._ a year more wealth. What a beautiful doctrine! Enormous increase in wealth. Foreigners can send us _51,000,000l._ of corn for our coal, while Great Britain could only grow _50,000,000l._ Free Trade for ever! It never occurs to the Free Traders to ask: 'Is it better to have a million men working in the bowels of the earth, or a million men tilling the surface?"[779]

"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. 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. As I have repeatedly pointed out before, we have by sacrificing our agriculture destroyed our insular position. As an island we may be, or should be, free from serious danger of invasion. But of what avail is our vaunted silver shield of the sea if we depend upon other nations for our food? We are helpless in case of a great war. It is not necessary to invade England in order to conquer her. Once our food-supply is stopped, we are shut up like a beleaguered city, to starve or to surrender. Stop the import of food into England for three months and we shall be obliged to surrender at discretion. And our agriculture is to be ruined and the safety and honour of the Empire are to be endangered that a few landlords, coal-owners, and moneylenders may wax fat upon the vitals of the nation."[780] "For over half a century we have been committing industrial suicide. By laying waste our own land and throwing ourselves upon the mercy of the foreign food-producers, we have been deliberately sacrificing the millions and the future to the millionaires and the moment."[781]

The celebrated cheapness argument of the Free Traders has little attraction for Socialists. "'Ah,' says the Free Trader, 'but think of the cheaper grocery and the cheaper boots!' Yes, let us think of them.

What good does it do me, my countrymen, one of the unemployed, to think of the wealth of the Rothschilds, or the cheap boots and the cheap bread and the cheap clothes of those who benefit by these things? I am one of the nation. Are these things that are so good for the nation good for me? How can these cheap wares do me any good, who have no money at all? The fact is that Free Trade and cheap goods are only good for certain individuals. They are good for those who benefit by them."[782]

Cheapness means low wages. Cheapness may benefit that strange and mythical figure the abstract "consumer" of the text-books, but need not benefit the working man. Very likely it will harm him, because "Cheap goods mean cheap labour, and cheap labour means low wages. You have nothing but your labour to sell, and you are told that it will pay you to sell that cheaply."[783] "All commodities are produced by labour, therefore to drive commodities down to their cheapest rate must result in cheap labour."[784] Cheapness may fill those with joy who have money in their pocket and who do not care how cheap goods are produced. But incidentally the policy of Free Trade and of _laisser faire_, the policy of cheapness which benefits the consumer and takes no notice of the producer, encourages and causes sweating and untold misery to the workers. "Do you ever consider the lives of the people who make these marvellously cheap things? And do you ever think what kind of homes they have; in what kind of districts the homes are situated; and what becomes of those people when they are too ill, or too old, or too infirm to earn even four shillings as the price of a hundred and twelve hours' work?"[785]

Free Trade may have been beneficial in Cobden's time, when Great Britain was the chief manufacturing country in the world. But what is its effect under the changed conditions of the present time, and how will these changes affect her industries and her workers? "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. Is it likely, then, that we can keep all our foreign trade, or that what we keep will be as profitable as it is at present?"[786] "Suppose we lost a lump of our export trade. Suppose the j.a.panese, Chinese, or Americans capture some of our markets. Where should we get our food? If we could not sell our exports, we could not buy imports of food. We are walking on thin ice, my countrymen. And if compet.i.tion became keener, what would the champions of Free Trade do to meet it? They would say: 'We must sell our manufactures, or you will get no food. To sell our manufactures we must reduce the price. To reduce the price we must reduce the cost of production. To reduce the cost of production we must cut down wages.'"[787] "Free Trade means _laisser faire_ all round, not only in regard to inanimate commodities, but in respect to that most important commodity of all--human labour power. Chinese, j.a.panese, Indians, negroes are all permitted under complete Free Trade to compete freely on their lower standard of life against the white man."[788] "A demand for a general reduction of wages is the end of the fine talk about big profits, national prosperity, and the 'workshop of the world.' The British workers are to emulate the thrift of the j.a.panese, the Hindoos, and the Chinese, and learn to live on boiled rice and water.

Why? So that they can accept low wages and retain our precious foreign trade. Yes, that is the latest idea. With brutal frankness the workers of Britain have been told again and again that, 'If we are to keep our foreign trade, the British workers must accept the conditions of their foreign rivals,' and that is the result of our commercial glory! For that we have sacrificed our agriculture and endangered the safety of our Empire."[789]

The a.s.sertion of the Free Traders that Free Trade has made Great Britain prosperous is treated with scorn. "The Free Traders say we, the nation, are richer under this system than we should be under Protection. By employing ourselves in those occupations in which we can produce the cheapest article, we earn the most wealth in money value.--In money value.--They do not consider the twelve million underfed, the hundreds of thousands of unemployed. The nation, _we_, are richer. That is the test. Well, my countrymen, I think it is a d.a.m.nable doctrine, and its results are d.a.m.nable. The Free Traders boast of our wealth. Are twelve million underfed, a million starving children, a million paupers, an infantile death-rate of 150 per 1,000--are these signs of wealth? The question is not 'Is the nation wealthy?' but 'Are the people wealthy?' Judged by this standard, how poor a nation is this, my countrymen! The Free Traders tell us that we earn more wealth under Free Trade than we should under Protection.

Again I ask: Who are _we_?"[790] A Socialist weekly lately said: "Great Britain, I understand, has recovered its prosperity; our exports are going strong, and our imports have nothing much to complain about. Prosperity? Why, Great Britain is simply rolling in--statistics."[791]

Socialists rightly demand that the effect of British fiscal policy should be judged not by its effect upon the wealth of the few, but upon the employment of the many, and they clearly recognise the destructive effect which Free Trade has upon the national industries.

"Under Free Trade it is possible for a foreign trader to take trade away from a British trader. If for any reason we lost an important trade, or several small trades, our unemployed would naturally grow.

The Free Trade theory that the capital and the labour in the lost trades will find other employment is simply theory. Suppose they didn't. The Free Trader has no answer except: Look at our enormous wealth. My countrymen, looking at another man's wealth does not feed me, clothe me, and house me."[792] "When men are thrown out of work, by compet.i.tion, or depression, or any cause, they do not so easily 'transfer their services to some other new employment.' It is easy to make them do so--on paper. And when they do get a fresh job, is it always as good as the one lost? Do they not often lose all their belongings, and get into debt, while looking for that new employment which the Free Traders talk about so glibly? and do not capitalists often lose a good deal of capital before they give up the fight for the trade? Nevertheless, say the Free Traders, we, the nation, are richer under this system than we should be under Protection. By employing ourselves in those occupations in which we can produce the cheapest article, we earn the most wealth in money value."[793] To this argument the Socialists reply: "Does your moral law say it is right that men should be thrown on the streets to starve because other men in other countries produce goods 2-1/2 per cent. cheaper?"[794]

The statistics of an enormous foreign trade, which Free Traders triumphantly display for the edification of the ma.s.ses, give, according to the Socialists, little consolation to the unemployed and ill-employed workers. "Figures, be they never so dazzling, and numbers, be they never so round, will not feed the hungry, house the homeless, or bring light and warmth into the drear, precarious lives of the ma.s.s of our people. The increase of trade means only an increase of production, and not necessarily of persons employed or wages gained. With the rapid concentration of industries and the perfection of labour-saving devices, production has been enormously increased without any corresponding increase of employment; in some cases, with an actual decrease of employment. What the workers are interested in is not the mere growth of profitable trade, but the extent to which the industries of their country afford them and their families a security of livelihood, and the reasonable comforts and recreations which their labour has more than earned."[795]

Most Socialists frankly own that Free Trade has been a failure. "In the House of Commons on March 12th, 1906, Mr. P. Snowden, M.P., said: 'Sixty years of Free Trade had failed to mitigate or palliate to any considerable extent the grave industrial and social evils which Free Traders and Protectionists alike were compelled to admit. Sir H.

Campbell-Bannerman had admitted them when he said that 30 per cent. of our population were on the verge of hunger. He contended that whatever improvement had been effected in the condition of the people during the last sixty years was due to other causes than Free Trade."[796]

During 1907 the complaints among the Socialists about the effect of Free Trade upon employment have become louder. The fact that British unemployed workmen furnished an apparently inexhaustible supply of strike-breakers to Continental employers, that men fought like wild beasts at the registry offices in order to be allowed to act as strike-breakers in Hamburg and Antwerp, has shown the great prevalence of unemployment. Commenting hereon a Socialist monthly said in bitter irony, under the heading "British Blacklegs": "The intervention in the Antwerp dock-workers' strike of British workmen as blacklegs is a striking commentary on the prosperity of the people of this country.

Under Free Trade we have been told--_ad nauseam_--by Liberal politicians that the British working-man is the most prosperous and well-fed human being on the face of the earth. He, with wages nearly double those of the best-paid Continental workman, with all kinds of provisions infinitely cheaper--thanks to Free Trade--than they can be procured elsewhere, is indeed 'G.o.d's Englishman.' It would be as unkind as rude to suggest that these honourable politicians had been lying. The only alternative conclusion to be arrived at is that the British workman is a most disinterested being, willing to sacrifice his prosperity and comfort in order to compel the miserably paid dockers of Antwerp and Hamburg to submit to the conditions against which they have revolted."[797] The action of Mr. Haldane, the present Secretary of State for War, in dismissing a large number of workmen from Woolwich a.r.s.enal and giving a contract for 100,000 horseshoes for the British Army to an American firm on account of greater cheapness, prompted the following verses:

Mr. Haldane was smiling and suave As his views upon horseshoes he gave; He will buy from the Yanks (Who take orders with thanks).

And believes that much money he'll save.

How thankful we all ought to be That this most kind and careful M.P.

Thus shows Woolwich men They will be employed when They're off to the States--Q.E.D.[798]

Some Socialists take a very pessimistic view of the economic position of Great Britain. Mr. Hyndman said that "Great Britain had lost her commercial and industrial supremacy. The United States now stood first, Germany second, and Great Britain was forced into third place."[799] Many years ago some far-seeing Socialists had prophesied the coming industrial decline of Great Britain. "The notion that Britain can hold a monopoly of engineering, or of any other trade, must be given up. Britain cannot; countries that have been almost wholly agricultural are rapidly becoming manufacturers too."[800] Of late these pessimistic forecasts have become louder and more frequent.

The progress of industrial countries can be measured, to some extent, by their output of coal, and "at no distant date Germany will probably also surpa.s.s our output and we will be relegated to third place."[801]

This event will very likely take place about 1910. The statistics published by the British Board of Trade are deceptive. They leave out Germany's very large and constantly growing output of lignite, which amounts to about 60,000,000 tons per annum, and which increases Germany's coal output, as stated by the Board of Trade, by about 50 per cent.

British Socialists have found out that the Free Trade doctrine with its hypothetical "consumer" for a centre is opposed to science, to experience, and to common-sense. "The present system of trade is, in my opinion, opposed entirely to reason and justice. Nearly all our practical economists of to-day put the consumer first and the producer last. This is wrong. There can be no just or sane system which does not first consider the producer and then widely and equitably regulates the distribution of the things produced."[802] They recognise that Free Trade has caused ill-balanced production, and that, through the stagnation and decay of industries, men who ought to be engaged in production have been forced into more or less unprofitable and more or less useless employments. "What this country is rotting for is the want of more and better producers of necessaries--more and better market-gardeners, fruit-growers, foresters, general farmers, wool-workers, builders, and useful makers generally. Instead of which, the present system is giving us more and more non-producers--more and more shopkeepers, middlemen, commercial travellers, advertising agents, dealers, and wasters generally.

According to the last census returns, we find that whilst the agricultural cla.s.s shows a terrible decline, and the industrial cla.s.s has barely kept pace with the population as a whole, on the other hand the commercial, or selling cla.s.s, shows an increase of over 42 per cent. inside ten years."[803]