Practical Politics; or, the Liberalism of To-day Part 11

The view of the former is concisely stated in the programme of the Social Democratic Federation, in which are urged the immediate compulsory construction of healthy artisans' and agricultural labourers'

dwellings, free compulsory education for all cla.s.ses, with at least one wholesome meal a day in each school, an eight hours' working day, c.u.mulative taxation upon all incomes above a fixed minimum, State appropriation of railways with or without compensation, the establishment of national banks absorbing all others, rapid extinction of the National Debt, nationalization of the land, and organization of agricultural and industrial armies under State control on co-operative principles. These are merely claimed to be palliative measures, which should be followed by others more drastic; but they suffice to show the present-day Socialistic idea.

Against this extreme Socialist view must be set the extreme Individualist, which has been expressed by Mr. Spencer, who says--"There is reason to believe that the ultimate political condition must be one in which personal freedom is the greatest possible, and governmental power the least possible; that, namely, in which the freedom of each has no limit but the like freedom of all; while the sole governmental duty is the maintenance of this limit." And the main idea of this statement had been antic.i.p.ated in the remark, a couple of thousand years ago, by one of the greatest of Greek philosophers--"The truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most willing is the worst."

The real question, of course, is not between any such extreme views, for Mr. Spencer would not deny that the State sometimes must interfere, and Mr. George would be the last to plead against the use of all individual effort. But though the limits of State-interference are what we have to determine, it is necessary first to consider whether the State should interfere at all.

An obvious answer is that the State interferes already in many a social problem, and that no one seriously proposes to do away with that interference. But even those who would thus reply may not be aware of the extent to which the State makes its influence felt in social affairs. The administration of justice and the protection of the commonwealth are necessarily, in all civilized communities, the affair of the State. But beyond these limits, the ruling authority, whether exercised through imperial or local officials, wanders at many a point.

The Poor-law is a striking instance of this fact, for it is a piece of legislation the Socialistic tendency of which none can gainsay, the State practically a.s.serting that no one need starve, and providing food and shelter, under certain conditions, for all who are unable, or even unwilling, to work. The system of national education is another instance of Socialistic legislation; it makes me pay towards the education of my neighbour's child, not for any immediate benefit to myself, but for my ultimate benefit as a citizen of an improved State. And the ruling authority goes further even than compelling me to feed the poor and educate the young, for it interferes, presumably for my good, with my liberty in many a detail.

From birth to death the State, even under present conditions, steps in at point after point to direct one's path. Within forty days of being born I am compelled by the State to be registered; within three months I am equally constrained to be vaccinated; from five years old to thirteen, with certain limitations, I have to be sent to school; and, should my parents be so sensible as to apprentice me to a trade, a fee has to be paid to the State for the indentures. When I marry it is at a State-licensed inst.i.tution; when I die it is by a State-appointed officer that my decease is certified. And in the interval, the State prevents me from obtaining intoxicating liquor except from certain individuals and within specified hours; it compels me, if I am a house-owner, to effect my sanitary arrangements in a given way; and if I am a house-holder, to keep my pavement free from snow. From the highest details to the lowest, then, the State even now interferes; whether I fail to have my child vaccinated or my chimney swept, it steps in; and those who argue that Individualism is a theory so true that State-interference should be abolished, have a number of fruits of that State-interference to get rid of before they can claim the victory.

But probably even those who imagine that they are extreme Individualists would not wish to remove from the Statute Book such specimens of State-interference as are now upon it. If they did, the clearance would indeed be great. For imagine what the effect would be if, in addition to the other measures indicated, we got rid of all the enactments affecting labour, and again allowed the employment of climbing boys as chimney-sweeps, of women and small children in mines, of men and women in white-lead works without precaution of any kind, of sailors in the merchant service without the protection of lime-juice against scurvy and of survey against sinking; picture what the population of our manufacturing districts would by this time have become without the protection afforded by the Factory Acts; remember what an improvement has been made in the way of guarding dangerous machinery, owing to the penalties inflicted upon careless owners by the Employers' Liability Act; and then answer whether State-interference is necessarily a bad thing.

Within the limits which experience has shown to be desirable, it is a good thing; and it is no answer to this a.s.sumption that it has sometimes failed to secure the object aimed at. As long as nothing in this world is perfect, we cannot expect the action of the State to be; the only test in every case is an average test. If such State-interference as we see has on the whole done well, the balance must be struck in its favour; and in human affairs a favourable balance is all we have a right to antic.i.p.ate.

The Individualistic ideal may be a good one, but it is the Individualistic real we have to examine. And what would become of the poor, the weak, and the helpless if the State stood aside from all interference with the affairs of men? That the rich and the powerful would grind them to powder in their struggles for more riches and greater power. The days of universal brotherhood have never existed--and, what is more, never will exist--and that State which protects the weak against the strong and the poor against the rich is the best worth striving for.

An ideal condition of society would be that in which every able-bodied person would have to work for a living with body, brains, or both; but birth and bullion play so large a part under present circ.u.mstances that, while we may sigh for the ideal, we must recognize the real. And this applies to all thinkers on our social affairs--to the extreme Socialist as to the extreme Individualist. The mystery of life cannot be solved by logic, and the pain, the poverty, and the crime which that mystery involves dissipated by law.

It must constantly also be borne in mind that mankind is not governed by material considerations alone, but is largely swayed by sentiment; and any system which ignores this and treats men simply as calculating machines is bound to fail. Thus it is that, while men accept the latest doctrines of social science, they do not act upon them. They sympathize with Mr. Spencer's account of an ideal State in which the governmental power is the least possible, but they pay the education rate, support compulsory vaccination, and express not the slightest wish to see public-houses open all night. It is in this as in other theoretical affairs--our minds agree, but our hearts arbitrate. A parent may accept most thoroughly the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, but he will strive his utmost to preserve life to a crippled or lunatic child. And a trader may indicate a.s.sent when he hears that the employed ought to be paid only the amount which would secure similar services in the labour market; but, if he is even commonly honest in his dealings with his fellows, he will not discharge an old servant because he can obtain another for something less.

But no sooner do some men secure a fact than it begets a theory, and truth thus becomes the father of many lies. It is well enough that every one should strive to be independent of external help, but it is not within the bounds of the possible that every one can be perfectly so; and that being the case, the State, as the protector of all, is bound to interfere. What has to be decided is the limit of such interference; and although upon that point no precise line can be drawn, for as conditions vary so must the limit change, discussion may serve to show that all the truth lies in neither of the contending theories, but in a judicious use of both.

x.x.xII.--HOW FAR SHOULD THE STATE INTERFERE?

To precisely limit the interference of the State in private affairs has been urged to be impossible, for the boundaries of such interference are ever changing, and will continue ever to change as the circ.u.mstances vary. In some respects the State has more to say about our domestic concerns, in others less, than it formerly had; but there never was a time when it left us altogether alone, and there is never likely to be.

When people groan about "grandmotherly government," and talk hazily of "good old times" when such was unknown, they speak with little knowledge of the social history of England. They forget that there was a day when under penalty men had to put out their fires at a given hour; that later they were directed to dress in a fashion presumed to be becoming to their several ranks; that at one period they had to profess Catholicism under fear of the f.a.got, and at another Protestantism under penalty of the rope; that in later days they had to go to church to escape being fined, and even until this century had to take the Sacrament in order to qualify for office; that in other times they were allowed to bury their dead only in certain clothing; that a section of them had to give six days in the year to the repair of the highways; and that in divers further ways their individual liberty was fettered in a fashion which would not now be tolerated for a day.

The State, in fact, has always claimed to be all-powerful, and has never a.s.signed set limits to its demands. It has a.s.serted, and still a.s.serts, rights over that which is intangible, which it has not created, and which in its origin is superhuman. If a man has used a stream for his own purposes for a given period, the State secures him a right of use, protecting him from interference in or providing him compensation for that which neither he nor the State made or purchased. If another has a window which is threatened with being darkened by a newer building adjacent, the State steps in to a.s.sure him of the retention of his "ancient light." And when people have for a series of years walked without hindrance across land belonging to others, the State gives to the commonalty a right of way, which, however seemingly intangible, often seriously deteriorates the value of the property over which it is exercised.

In the gravest concerns of man as well as in those which merely affect his comfort or his purse, the State intervenes. It used to a.s.sert by means of the press-gang its right to seize men for service in war; and it could at this day order a conscription which would compel all in the prime of life to pa.s.s under the military yoke. It can and does direct property to be seized for public purposes, upon compensation paid, from an unwilling owner; and it can and does take out of our pockets a proportion of our income, which proportion it has the power to largely increase, in order to pay its way.

That which does all these things is for convenience called "the State,"

but in present circ.u.mstances it is really ourselves. The nation is simply the aggregate of the citizens who compose it, and each one of us--especially each possessor of a vote--is a distinct portion of the State. The misfortune which attends upon the frequent use of the word is that many persons seem to think that there is some mystic power called "the State" or "the Government," which can dispense favours, spend money, and do great things--all from within itself. But neither State nor Government has any money save that which we give it, and no power except that which is accorded by the const.i.tuencies. And, therefore, when people cry out for "the State" to do this or "the Government" to do that, they should remember that _they_ are portions of the force they beseech, and that if what is to be done costs money they will have to pay their share; and this much it is highly useful to recollect when appeals are more and more being made to the State for help.

Let us start, therefore, with the conviction that the State, which is simply ourselves and others like us, has no power beyond what the people give it, and no money but what the people pay; that it has throughout our history attempted to solve social problems, and is doing so still; and that it is as sure as anything human can be that if it did not interfere in certain cases to aid the struggling, to put a curb upon the tyrannous, and to regulate divers specified affairs, the poor and the helpless would be the princ.i.p.al sufferers, and greed of gain and l.u.s.t of power would be in the ascendant.

But it would be easy to push this interference too far. Admitted that the State has done certain things for us, and, in the main, done them well, this affords no argument that it should do everything in the hope that equal success would follow. There is an a.s.sumption dear to pedants and schoolboys that because one does _this_ he is bound to do _that_, but neither our daily lives nor our State concerns are or ought to be so governed. They are largely regulated by circ.u.mstances, with the idea of doing the best possible under existing conditions. For there is no infallible scheme of government or of society, and the system must be made to suit the people and not the people to suit the system.

And although the State, in certain departments of its interference, has done well, it has not brilliantly succeeded where it has entered into compet.i.tion with private enterprise. Just as public companies are worked at a greater cost than the same concerns in the hands of individual proprietors, so Government enterprises are always highly expensive and often disastrous failures. It did not need the recent revelations concerning the waste, the jobbery, and the wanton extravagance of certain of our departments to inform those who knew anything of the public offices or the Government dockyards, that such things were the customary results of the system. Stroll through a private dockyard and then through a public one; visit a large mercantile office and then a Government department in Whitehall; and decide whether the State is a model master. It may be said that it is simply the system that is to blame, but surely the universality of evil result from the same cause should teach a lesson.

There may be a.s.serted the possible exception of the Post-office to the charge that the State fails where it competes with private enterprise; and no one would deny that that department does good work, and that, if all others were like it, there would be less reason to complain. But it must not be forgotten that the Post-office, as far as the main portion of its business--letter-carrying--is concerned, does not compete with private enterprise, for it possesses by law the monopoly of the work; and that the cheapness of postage, upon which it prides itself, is largely secured by making the people of London pay at least twice as much as they would if compet.i.tion existed for the letters they send among themselves, in order that they and others may, for the same money, forward letters to Perth or Penzance. As to the Government monopoly of the telegraphs, the result, while beneficial in a certain degree, has had this effect--it has partially strangled the telephone system; and that will hardly be claimed as a triumph.

Any suggestion, therefore, for making the State interfere still further with private enterprise ought to be most carefully weighed. The question really is whether it has not already done as much in this direction as it ought, and whether, generally speaking, the limits now laid down are not sufficiently broad.

What it does is this: it undertakes by means of an army and navy our external defence; secures by the police our internal safety; makes provision by which no person need starve; enforces upon all a certain amount of education; and enjoins a set of sanitary regulations for the protection of the community from infectious or contagious disease. These are the main items of its work, but beyond them it provides the means of communication by post and telegraph; fixes in certain degree the fares on railways and the price of gas; encourages thrift by the inst.i.tution of savings banks; and gives us all an opportunity for religious exercise by the provision of an Established Church.

The objectionable part of this is that which directly interferes with personal opinion or private enterprise. The n.o.ble saying of Cromwell--"The State, in choosing men to serve it, takes no notice of their opinions; if they be willing faithfully to serve it, that satisfies"--spoken before its time, as even some of the Protector's friends may have considered, must now be extended to the contention that the State has no concern whatever with the opinions of its citizens, and that it ought not to endow any sect at the expense of the rest.

Concerning the compet.i.tion with private enterprise, the State, in providing a system of national education and a postal and telegraph service, has gone to the verge of what it should do in such a direction.

While, therefore, the State should not abandon any function it now exercises, the severest caution ought to be used before another is undertaken. All attempts of the ruling power to interfere too closely with the private concerns of men--as witness the sumptuary laws and those against usury--have defeated themselves, and it is not for us to revive systems of interference which, even in the Middle Ages, broke down. It is no answer that some things are going so badly that State-interference may be considered absolutely necessary, and that it is merely the extremity of nervousness that hinders the experiment being tried. Caution is not cowardice, and no man is called upon to be foolhardy to prove his freedom from fear.

When it is said that, in certain directions, matters have come to such a pa.s.s that the State must more actively interfere, let us note that extremes meet upon this as upon so many other matters; for the cry that "the country is going to the dogs" is nowadays raised as l.u.s.tily by some friends of the working man as ever it has been by the retired colonels and superannuated admirals whose exclusive possession it was so long.

And the remedy suggested is that the State should do this, that, and the other, with an utter ignoring of the fact, which all history proves, that the creation of an additional army of officials would strangle enterprise and stifle invention. Thus from the general, it will be necessary to go to the particular, and to ask how far the proposed remedy would be effectual. The principle here argued is that the State should concern itself simply with external defence, internal safety, the protection of those unable to guard themselves, and the undertaking of such work for the general good as cannot be better done by private enterprise; and this principle holds good against many a nostrum now put forward as an infallible remedy for social ills.

x.x.xIII.--SHOULD THE STATE REGULATE LABOUR OR WAGES?

Among the many social questions which the pressure of circ.u.mstances may soon make political is that of the State regulation of the hours of labour. The president of the Trades Union Congress for 1887 advocated, for instance, the pa.s.sing of an Eight Hours Bill; and it is desirable to consider whether this would in any respect be a step in a right direction.

The argument for such a measure appears in principle to be this: that the cla.s.ses dependent upon manual labour for their livelihood have too many hands for the work there is to do; that those who do get work toil too long; and that both evils would be remedied by restricting the hours of labour, more men thus finding employment and all working well within their strength.

Against these points may be set others: that England has already been severely affected by compet.i.tion with countries where the hours are longer and the pay less; that any further restriction of hours without a corresponding reduction of pay would be ruinous to our trade; and that it is highly probable that the majority of workmen would prefer to labour for nine hours at their present wages than for eight hours at less. The last contention, of course, might be answered by an enactment fixing not only the hours to be worked but the wages to be paid. If this is wished for, it should be clearly put; but before any step is taken towards either such measure, several points concerning each, which now appear more than doubtful, should be made clear.

A fallacy underlying much of the contention in favour of any such enactment is the idea that the community is divided into two distinct cla.s.ses--the producing and the consuming. As a fact, there are no producers who do not consume, though there are some consumers who do not produce. But is even that an unmixed evil? There is a further fallacy which arbitrarily divides us into capitalists and labourers; but every man who can purchase the result of another's labour is a capitalist, and that much-denounced person will never be got rid of as long as it is easier to buy than to make.

A third cla.s.s which secures the condemnation of many is "the middle-man." It is easy to denounce him, but he is a necessity at once of commerce and of comfort. If one wants some coffee at breakfast, he cannot go to Java for the berry, the West Indies for the sugar, the dairy-farm for the milk, and the Potteries for the cup from which to drink. So far from the middle-man unduly increasing the price of those articles, he lessens it by dealing in bulk with what it would pay neither the producer nor the purchaser to deal with in small quant.i.ties; and not only lessens the price but, in regard to the commodities of a distant land, renders it practically possible for us to have them at all.

It is equally useless to rail at compet.i.tion as if it were inherently evil, for there will be compet.i.tion as long as men exist to struggle for supremacy. And compet.i.tion keeps the world alive, as the tide prevents the sea from stagnating. Occasionally the waves break their bounds, and loss and tribulation result; but the power for good must not be ignored, because the power for evil is sometimes prominent.

To talk of the working cla.s.ses as if they thought and acted in a body is another delusion. Not only this. The frequent a.s.sumption that somebody or other can speak on behalf of "the people" is a mistake. When it is done, one is ent.i.tled to ask what the phrase means? "The people" are the whole body of the population, and no one section, even if a majority has a right to exclusively claim the t.i.tle. In legislating, regard must be had to the interests of all and not to those of a part, however numerous; and this brings us straight to the question of interfering by enactment with the price or the amount of labour.

It is curious to note that the demand which is now being raised by some Trade Unionists on behalf of labour is similar in principle to that which was used for centuries by the propertied cla.s.ses against labour.

The Statute of Labourers, pa.s.sed in the reign of Edward III., fixed wages in most precise fashion, settling that of a master mason, for instance, at fourpence and of journeymen masons at threepence a day. And as lately as only eight years after George III. came to the throne, all master tailors in London and for five miles round were forbidden under heavy penalties from giving, and their workmen from accepting, more than 2s. 7d. a day--except in the case of a general mourning. Subsequently, statesmen grew more wise, and, in the closing years of last century, the younger Pitt refused to support a bill to regulate the wages of labourers in husbandry. But it is singular that, whereas Adam Smith could say that "whenever the Legislature attempts to regulate the difference between masters and their workmen, its counsellors are always the masters," to-day it is the workmen who promise to become so.

If it be replied that it is State interference with the hours alone and not with the wages that is demanded, it may be submitted that if the one is done it will be a hardship to the worker rather than a boon if the other be not attempted. For, if a man, by working nine hours a day, could earn, say, 27s. a week, it is obvious that for eight hours a day he would not earn more in the same period than 24s., unless Parliament insisted that he should receive the higher sum for the less work. But is Parliament likely to do anything of the kind; if it did do it, would it be found to be practicable; and, if it were found to be practicable, would it be just?

Parliament is not likely to do anything of the kind, because the experience of centuries has taught us that it is impossible to fix wages by statute. It was tried over and over again, first by enactments applying to the whole country, and then by regulations for each county, settled by the local justices of the peace; but, though the experiment was backed by all the forces of law, it broke down so utterly that in time it had to be got rid of.

Even if the return could be secured of a majority to Parliament pledged to the proposal, would it be likely to be any more practicable to-day than it was in olden times? We are now an open market for the world. If hours were lessened and wages not reduced, imported articles from foreign countries would become much cheaper than our own goods, and would be bought to the detriment of English workers. Is it proposed by the promoters of a compulsory eight-hours working day that we should have Protection once more, and a prohibitory tariff placed upon all manufactured goods brought from abroad in order to keep up the price of English articles?

And, further, if it were practicable, would it be just? It would be unjust to the employers, who would have to pay present prices for lessened work; it would be unjust to the toilers, in that it would prevent them from making a higher income by working more; and it would be unjust to the consumers, in making them give a greater price for the commodities they required. Those who propose the compulsory eight hours would presumably wish wages to be maintained at the present standard; it would hardly be a popular cry if it would have the effect of bringing wages down.

If the Legislature is to interfere at all in this direction, the old proposal had better be put forward at once--

Eight hours' work, eight hours' play, Eight hours' sleep, and eight shillings a day.

This, at least, would have the merit of simplicity, and the more comprehensive proposal is as just and as practicable as the limited one now put forward. But even as to the limited one, it would be well to know how far and to what persons it would be applied. If the answer is "The working cla.s.ses," the further question is "How are these to be defined?" Sailors, for instance, are working men, but no one would seriously propose to apply the eight hours' system to them. Granting they form an extreme exception, how are we to deal with shopkeepers and all whom they employ? The shopkeepers may be put aside as "capitalists"