Twentieth Century Socialism Part 24

That the state will occasionally fail in this task is to be expected.

But what is the worst consequence that can result from failure?

Nothing more than the maintenance of the compet.i.tive system in every field of industry where the state fails. If the state fails to furnish good bread, private initiative will take the baking of bread from the state and will keep it until the state succeeds in furnishing bread to the taste of the public. If the state fails in furnishing garments, private initiative will keep garment making in its hands except in so far as the state makes garments for the inmates of its own inst.i.tutions.

Many problems connected with this system of production will occur to the mind of the intelligent reader. These problems, however, will be found to belong more strictly to the question of distribution and government control--two subjects that cannot be intelligently discussed until the question of private property in land has been answered.

-- 5. LAND

Socialism was formerly defined as including state ownership of land.

This idea is to-day, however, abandoned in favor of a much more intelligent system:

One princ.i.p.al difference between the Socialist and the Single Taxer is that the Single Taxer is opposed to state ownership of all land; and it is probable that the Single Taxer is more wise in this respect than the state Socialist. In the first place, the state Socialist who wants all land to be owned by the state ignores some very fundamental facts in human nature: He ignores the fact that humanity has for generations cultivated the instinct of ownership in land. There is nothing dearer in life to the French peasant than the strip of land barely sufficient to support life, and he will cling to that strip of land until some accident has torn it from him and reduced him to the condition of a pauper. Out of this instinct of ownership springs the extraordinary industry of the farmer--an industry which is not excelled or equalled in any but sweated trades.

The life of the peasant or small farmer is one of hardship that leaves no moment for leisure, and of monotony that populates our lunatic asylums.[179] Not only is the life of the farmer one of the hardest, but it is also one of the least secure. The failure of a single crop, the loss of a single horse, disease in a chicken yard, a violent hail-storm--any of these may oblige a farmer to put that first small mortgage on his farm which is the beginning of his ruin. Nevertheless, the farmer sticks to his farm and labors on it from the rising of the sun, through the glare of noon and up to the last ray in the west, because the land is his own and he has for it the kind of affection that a mother has for her child--an affection that makes no sacrifice too great. It would seem unwise to deprive the farmer of the satisfaction of ownership and the community of the industry and productivity which this sense of ownership results in.

There is no conceivable advantage in depriving the farmer of the ownership of his farm. The farmer now pays taxes on his land. The right of the state to exact a tax puts the state in the position of a landlord except that the state calls the tribute it levies on the farm a "tax," whereas the owner calls this tribute "rent." Of course there is a great difference between the tax levied by the state and the rent paid by the farmer to the private owner, because the one is light and the other heavy. This is the material difference which must not be lost sight of in the discussion of the subject. Every farmer expects to pay taxes to the state and all he asks is that the tax be not an onerous one. It can be rendered less onerous in the cooperative commonwealth than to-day because a cooperative commonwealth will not exact payment of taxes in money, but will content itself with payment in produce. Instead of the state taking over the land and depriving the farmer of ownership, and exacting rent, the cooperative commonwealth will leave the ownership in the farmer and exact a tax in produce; and so long as this tax is paid, the farmer will remain the undisputed owner of his land, and will continue to give it that hourly care without which the best results can hardly be obtained.

There is nothing in modern Socialism, therefore, to frighten the farmer. He cannot but benefit by it, for his taxes will be levied in produce instead of in cash; and it is the conversion of farm produce into cash which is the farmer's main difficulty to-day, as was seen when money was discussed.

The t.i.tle of a farmer under a cooperative commonwealth will be much like that of the peasant in the Island of Jersey, who generally purchases his land on condition of paying a certain amount to the owner per annum. These Jersey t.i.tles are just as secure as freeholds in England or in this country, subject of course to the payment of the rent charged.

The tax in produce, however, which the farmer is to pay the state will be far more just and fair. Land will be cla.s.sified according to productivity, and the farmer will never be called upon to furnish the state with a larger proportion of his crop than he can afford. On the other hand, farmers will not be allowed to keep the ownership of land which they do not use. If it is to the benefit of the community that land be drained, the owner will be called upon to drain it within a definite period. If he does not drain it within that period, the state will take his undrained land from him. Nor will the farmer be allowed to cut down timber where the maintenance of the timber is deemed important to the commonwealth.[180] He will be taught forestry and the propagation of deer, and shown how to produce as much income out of his timber as he would out of the land when cleared. Above all, he will be relieved from the exorbitant prices which he now pays the trust for every article which he does not himself produce. The state will undertake the task of distribution, so that he can receive as the farmer in South Australia does to-day--a part payment in cash for all produce he delivers at the nearest railroad, and a subsequent payment when his goods have been sold through the instrumentality of the state. But this last belongs to Distribution.

Prices will not be lowered by the compet.i.tion of farm colonies. On the contrary, they will be maintained by the prices asked by farm colonies. Farm-colony prices will allow every efficient farmer a substantial living, and the farmer will have the benefit of the example and advice furnished him by the nearest farm colony, which will be a model farm.

It may be objected that under this system the farmer will not have sufficient motive for adopting modern methods. There are undoubtedly farmers who are averse to the adoption of modern methods; but there are also thousands of farmers eager to know modern methods. Rev. J.D.

Detrich, who produced 6.7 tons of hay for every acre in cultivation on his farm[181] was so pestered by neighbors who called to study his methods that he was obliged to remove to an adjoining State.

Recalcitrant farmers will slowly be compelled to adopt modern methods by the fixing of prices that will make modern methods indispensable to prosperity.

In every way, therefore, the farmer will be benefited by the introduction of Socialism. He will keep the t.i.tle of ownership in his farm that is dear to him; he will pay his taxes in produce instead of in cash; he will have the benefit of education and advice at his door; and he will be relieved of the exorbitant prices now demanded by the trusts, and of that greatest of all his anxieties, the conversion of his produce into cash.

As regards city land, the problem is a very different one, because the treatment of city land is an essential part of the whole munic.i.p.al problem.

Practically all munic.i.p.al problems may be reduced to one--namely, crowding. As long as farmers live half a mile apart as they do on a standard 160-acre farm in the West, sewage and garbage are matters of individual rather than social interest. Provided the farmer does not pollute springs and water courses, he may dispose of his sewage and garbage as he chooses; but the moment men and women are crowded into cities on the vertical as well as on the horizontal plane, the disposal of sewage and garbage becomes of vital importance to the whole community.

So also the maintenance of roads is a comparatively simple problem in the country, where traffic is light; whereas in the city, where traffic is great, the pavement of the streets presents problems not only of resistance, but of noise. The droppings of horses on the country road can be neglected; whereas those of horses pa.s.sing a thousand per hour in a crowded city street create a dust injurious to health, and give rise to the problem of street cleaning.

Again, where land is plentiful compared with population, the rent charged for land is small and often negligible; whereas where land is scarce compared with the population, as in the island of Manhattan, the rent becomes prohibitive for all except the wealthy, and workingmen are reduced to the alternative between living near their work in unwholesome tenements and living far from their work in less unwholesome conditions. And this scarcity of land gives rise to many problems of congested districts, of tuberculosis, sanitation, transportation, and of rent.

If we look back on the whole history of our civilization, we shall see an unconscious struggle always going on between private interest and public spirit. The one tends to divide cities into two districts, one composed of the palaces of the rich, the other of the slums of the poor, and seeks to convert every problem of munic.i.p.al government into means of increasing private wealth. The other, on the contrary, we find manifested in the "Age of Faith" building cathedrals; in the Age of Beauty or Renaissance, building public squares and gardens; and in recent years taking such services as transportation out of the hands of private individuals and vesting them in the city. This struggle between public and private interest has been, up to the present time, unconscious or fitful. The Socialist asks that it should become conscious and progressive; that is all.

Let us take a few concrete instances: It was not until dark alleys were found to facilitate the work of criminals that munic.i.p.alities were driven to light the streets; it was not until a district of Birmingham had become a menace to public welfare because its filth engendered both disease and crime that the munic.i.p.ality was driven to put an end to it; it was not until cholera began its ravages that munic.i.p.alities were driven to provide clean dwellings; it was not until the evils attending imperfect transportation became intolerable that New York was driven to build subways; it was not until fires devastated the city that New York organized its fire department; it was not until the filth of the streets was intolerable that the city took the cleaning of streets out of the hands of private contractors.

Up to the present time munic.i.p.al activities have been forced into existence by the growth of the evils to a point where they could no longer be endured.

Over a century ago it was said that munic.i.p.alities were "sores upon the body politic," and this phrase has been solemnly quoted ever since as a sort of slogan of despair; whereas the munic.i.p.ality might be and ought to be, if intelligently administered, the mainspring of all our great national activities. The Socialist asks that, instead of waiting for evils to become intolerable before we attempt to cope with them and then adopting measures which, because they come late, are inadequate, we should take up munic.i.p.al administration as a housekeeper takes hold of the administration of her house, adopting measures which we must inevitably in the end adopt before the evils become intolerable, and before the city becomes so over-built as to make the difficulty of coping with these evils insurmountable.

This is the spirit in which a citizen should approach the question of city land; and if we do approach it in this spirit, the problem of how to put an end to the evils arising from private ownership of land is in many respects similar to those which present themselves in our effort to put an end to the evils of private ownership of stock.

For example, some land will be in the hands of men who have contributed absolutely nothing to its value. They have inherited it, and upon the rent which conditions have enabled them to exact they have lived lives of uselessness if not of profligacy. One has abjured his American nationality to avoid the payment of the personal tax, and applies the sums which he receives, thanks to the industry of the community in New York, to the publishing of a conservative newspaper in London opposed to every effort permanently to improve the conditions of humanity there. Some land will be in the hands of men and women who have invested it in the economies of a laborious life and for whom it represents an old-age pension. Between these two, there is every degree of merit.

The problem of compensation in taking over of city land will prove as complicated as in the socialization of industries, and very much the same principles will apply. Every city presents problems of its own, and it is difficult, therefore, to lay down general principles applicable to all cities. But one point seems clear: We shall have to live in our cities while we are transforming them, and this means that the transformation will have to be slow. If the state undertakes to transform the slums into habitable tenements, the present families of the slums must be accommodated somewhere while the transformation takes place.

Rebuilding our cities to accommodate them to the changed conditions of a cooperative commonwealth, will be little more than doing on a large scale what Birmingham did on a small scale when it converted its slums into Corporation Street. If it is to be done well, it must be preceded with the deliberate preparation indispensable to the success of every large undertaking.

The Single Taxers are right when they claim that the enhancement of the value of land due to the industry of the many ought not to be appropriated by the idle few. The "unearned increment" should accrue to the whole community and not to a few landowners. As, therefore, the enhancement of the value of land due to crowding is a peculiar feature of the city, and distinguishes it from the country, it seems indispensable that city land should eventually be owned by the city; by the ma.s.s of citizens who labor and dwell therein.

Another thing seems clear, namely, that a city cannot be transformed to suit the needs of a cooperative commonwealth so long as the city is owned by a few individuals who, by virtue of their ownership, have a right to resist the transformation.

The ownership in city land is, therefore, totally different from ownership in farmland. In the latter case, there is no necessity for suppressing private ownership; whereas in the city, such suppression seems indispensable. It may be added that the beautiful parts of every city are due to state ownership. The Place des Vosges was built by Henry IV; the Place Vendome was built by Louis XIV; the Place de la Concorde was built by Louis XV; the Champs Elysees and the Arc de l'Etoile were built by the two Napoleons. Practically all the great monuments of Paris were built by the state. Her streets were planned by the state, and the height of her private buildings regulated by the state. The same thing is true of London and Vienna. It is in our American cities alone that private initiative being allowed full sway, our buildings look like ill-a.s.sorted books in a neglected library; that we are committed to interminable streets and avenues which pa.s.s what monuments we have but lead up to none. In a word, our cities are committed to conditions so inartistic that the task of making them beautiful seems impossible short of destroying and rebuilding them altogether.

-- 6. SUMMARY OF PRODUCTIVE SIDE OF ECONOMIC CONSTRUCTION

It will be seen that modern Socialism does not propose to interfere with the private ownership of the farmer in his farm, and that the production of agricultural and dairy products will remain much in the same hands as at present, except that the state will have farm colonies to standardize production; to weed out those farmers who, because of their incapacity, are unable to produce what the land is capable of producing; and to furnish work not only for unsuccessful farmers, but for all who cannot earn a living in socialized industries or under compet.i.tive conditions. Such a condition of things will involve no redistribution of tasks. It will leave every man working in the industry in which he is; it will leave those who are engaged in compet.i.tion still engaged in compet.i.tion where it is not productive of injurious result. It will raise wages in all socialized industries, and raise the purchasing power of these industries by reducing prices; it will, therefore, raise the standard of life for the workingman, secure for him clean and wholesome habitations, and a possibility of maintaining a home in the best sense of the word, where our present civilization makes such a home impossible. By farm colonies it will make the exploitation of men, women, and children impossible. Children will not work at all until they have reached the fullest education of which they are capable; women will not be allowed in industrial work as long as they are bearing and rearing children; and men need never receive a sweated wage when they have state inst.i.tutions where they can in exchange for their work, have board, lodging, and as much wage as they can in addition earn. There will be no criminal cla.s.s, for no man need be driven to crime by want; and by the abolition of the criminal cla.s.s and the criminal environment, it is probable that crime resulting from economic causes will tend to disappear. Nor will a woman be driven by need to prost.i.tution. Every industry will provide compensation for its own superannuated and defectives, and the state will have but few for whom to furnish old-age pensions. The community will be relieved, therefore, of the enormous burden of vagrancy, pauperism, prost.i.tution, and crime; and all this without interfering with any compet.i.tive industry capable of supporting its workers up to the standard of life created by socialized industry, and without any such convulsion as will throw upon the state the dangerous problem of a.s.signing tasks.

We have heretofore considered only the problem of production; we have still to consider that of distribution.

-- 7. DISTRIBUTION.

At the present time anarchy reigns over production and distribution.

This anarchy has been in great part already replaced in the field of manufacture by the trust. By combination, or as Mr. Rockefeller says, "by cooperation" (Book II, Chapter III), all those engaged in the manufacture of the same thing have eliminated compet.i.tion so as to obtain the advantages of production on a large scale. The cooperative commonwealth will avail itself of the work already done by the trust, and as has been already shown, will leave all these trusted industries in the hands of those actually engaged in the work thereof.

In the field of agricultural production, however, little has been done to diminish the anarchy of distribution.[182]

The anarchy which now characterizes distribution must be considered under two heads: compet.i.tion in the field of transportation, and compet.i.tion in the field of retail trade. America is unique among the nations of the world for insisting upon railroads being run on the compet.i.tive system. In Europe franchises are given to railroads with a view to public welfare and the distinct policy of avoiding compet.i.tion. Capitals are adopted as railroad centers and franchises so granted as to furnish a system of main lines radiating from these centers in such a manner as to compete with one another the least possible. In America we have proceeded upon the plan that railroads are to compete just as traders do, and that it is by compet.i.tion that rates are to be kept down. Railroads competing with one another between the same places are run at a social loss, the community is better served by one railroad run in the interests of the country than by two between the same points run in the interests of private individuals.

As regards transportation then there seems to be no room for compet.i.tion whatever. The state should own all systems of transportation with a view to bringing the produce of the country and of the factory to the consumer at the lowest possible cost to the community.

Let us consider how a cooperative community will deal with compet.i.tion in the retail trade.

There is no reason why the private retailer conducting a business for his own account should not continue to exist side by side with a system of state distribution. There are reasons of propinquity and convenience that enable the small retailer to live to-day next door to the big department store. In the same way, the private retailer can perfectly well continue to live by the side of the state distributing system. Nevertheless, some parts of retail trade will be taken over absolutely, for example, milk, for hygienic reasons. And other departments will be so completely in the hands of the state that so long as the state furnishes a good quality it will be improbable that private enterprise will find it useful to interfere; as for example, the baking of bread.

As regards all those things which are likely to remain in the hands of individual enterprise, as, for example, things in which taste plays an important role--garments, hats, wallpaper, furniture, musical instruments, other instruments of pleasure such as athletic goods, bicycles, automobiles, steam launches, photographic apparatus--the retailing of these is likely to remain as much a matter of private enterprise as the production of them.

As regards the necessaries of life the consumer should be able to get them at the lowest possible price. All things of a hygienic character, which it is of the utmost importance that the consumer should have of the purest quality, the state will undertake not only to transport, but to distribute in state stores. It is of course conceivable that in some towns the state store will not be conducted to the satisfaction of its citizens, and private enterprise will therefore run a store in that place better than the state. In such case, private enterprise ought to be encouraged in its compet.i.tion. But inasmuch as good state management will be in a cooperative commonwealth a matter of the greatest importance, it is not likely that the citizen will long endure bad administration. This belongs more to the political aspect of Socialism than to the economic, and will be studied there. We shall therefore now pa.s.s to a brief consideration of just how this system of distribution will work.

The state, having control of transportation, will adopt the method now prevailing in South Australia, and will pay the manufacturer and the farmer in cash at least 50 per cent--if not more--of the value of his goods at the railroad station. These will then be transported by the state in conformity with the needs of the various villages, towns and cities to stores of its own. These will be run upon the cooperative plan; the goods sold at only a small margin above cost, this margin being kept to meet the expense of distribution; and the profits--if any--will be distributed at the end of the year amongst customers on the cooperative plan.

It is obvious, however, that if the state is to distribute in the most economical manner, it must have some control over production. It must not be called upon to transport and distribute more of any one thing than the public wants; nor must it be caught without enough to satisfy the needs of the consumer. This makes it indispensable to study the problem of control at the same time with the problem of distribution.

No function of the state will probably be more important in a cooperative commonwealth than that of controlling the production of those things which, because they are necessaries or have hygienic importance, a cooperative commonwealth should itself control, transport, and distribute.

The problem of control is not as difficult as it might at first seem.

We know perfectly well to-day how much wheat, corn, beef, mutton, etc., are actually consumed by our population. All we have to do to determine this amount for ourselves is to take, for example, the amount of wheat produced in the country, and the amount exported, subtract the exports from the product and determine the amount consumed in this country. The same thing can be done practically with every staple product. The state, therefore, can determine every year in advance how much of every staple product _must_ be produced for the needs of the country. It will, of course, add to the amount actually needed a margin to provide for poor crops and other accidents.

Let us consider how this control will be exercised as regards farm and dairy products. It has been already suggested that land should be cla.s.sified according to geographical conditions, exposure, and soil.

The productivity of the farm colonies will of course be known by the state. Every private farm will have its productivity roughly determined and every farmer will be expected to produce a minimum amount. Of the amount he produces, a part will be taken as taxes to furnish the government with the means to pay for administration. The rest will be paid for partly in gold and partly in orders on the state stores. The object of this system of payment is the following: