Twentieth Century Socialism Part 7

Indeed, the war through which England compelled China to purchase Indian opium looks like the greatest of international crimes; yet, when we understand this so-called crime of England, it turns out to have been a commercial necessity; for the remunerative prices obtained by the production of opium in India had so developed this branch of business that millions of Indians depended for their lives upon it, and either Chinese must poison themselves with opium, or Indians must die of hunger. The responsibilities of England were to her subjects first. The Chinese had to pay the price of this responsibility.

No better ill.u.s.tration of the wicked despotism that results from existing industrial conditions could be given than this; it brought about a condition of things under which England must commit a crime against China, or millions of her subjects must perish in Hindustan.

The millions that would starve in India if the opium market were suddenly closed remind us of the millions who are on the verge of starvation here in the United States,[33] and have been for two years past because of inherent and incurable defects in our industrial system. It is no answer to say that the evil results of overproduction are promptly remedied by the fluidity of capital to flow towards profitable and to withdraw from unprofitable manufactures. Every time such withdrawal takes place a corresponding number of workmen are thrown out of employment, are subjected to want and anguish of anxiety. The evil of this system cannot be explained away by pointing out that the capital withdrawn from one manufacture will soon be reinvested in another. A cotton-spinner cannot in a week or a month become a boilermaker. The commercial system which makes it easy for a capitalist to maintain income at cost of agony to the workingman does not recommend itself to the political student seeking the establishment of Justice in economic conditions. For, unfortunately, labor is not as "fluid" or insensible as capital. The workingman is a human being with the capacity for pain and anxiety that characterizes our race; and every time that capital profits by its fluidity to flow from one industry to another, the lives of men, women, and children are threatened by want. Even in prosperous times memories of the last panic and the certainty of a recurring panic keep their hearts haunted by fear.

Overproduction is by no means the only cause for these periods of unemployment. Indeed, the panic of 1907 was not the result of overproduction, but of overinvestment, or what the French call the "immobilization of capital." Every nation has two very different uses for wealth: one for keeping its population alive and comfortable, the other for developing the resources of the country, e.g., building roads and railroads, exploiting mines and quarries, etc. If too much wealth is immobilized in the latter, there is not enough for the former. The important function of regulating this matter is in the hands of bankers who make money not only out of the prosperity of prosperous times, but out of the panic of panic periods. Thus in May, 1907, the bankers, knowing that there had been overinvestment, took care of themselves by selling securities at top-notch prices, occasioning what was called the "rich man's panic," because the rich men of leisure were its victims; so that when the poor man's panic came in October and stocks tumbled to one-half of May prices, the bankers were able to reinvest the proceeds of May sales at fifty per cent profit. One of the consequences of this operation was that in October, 1907, neither manufacturers nor railroad men could get money to keep their work going; gangs of five thousand men at a time were summarily dismissed by railroads, and manufactures shut down.

Of course, the bankers did not "make the panic," as has been sometimes ignorantly a.s.serted; they only made money out of it both ways--out of high prices in May and out of low prices in November. And this ill.u.s.trates one of the great defects of the compet.i.tive system--that it puts different sets of men in a position where they can make individual profit out of the misfortunes of their neighbors; bankers out of panics; distillers and liquor dealers out of drunkenness; manufacturers and retailers out of adulteration, and so down the whole gamut of production and distribution; and this is the process which the bourgeois approves because it "makes character."

But the unemployment that is the necessary result of all periods of depression, whether produced by overproduction or overinvestment, deserves more than pa.s.sing mention for its fruits in the shape of misery, pauperism, prost.i.tution and crime, are menacing and prejudicial to the race.

-- 2. UNEMPLOYMENT

The subject of Unemployment has just been treated by an expert in a book[34] hailed by the press as the final word on the subject. All the theories ever propounded as to the cause of unemployment have been reviewed in this book, from overproduction, underconsumption, compet.i.tion, to "spots on the sun." And the author concludes in favor of compet.i.tion.[35] As regards the facts and the explanation of these facts, there seems to be no essential disagreement between orthodox economists and Socialists. Both trace unemployment back to compet.i.tion. And in addition to the arguments given by Mr. Beveridge for tracing unemployment to compet.i.tion, I venture to add that compet.i.tion must be decided to be the primary cause, because it is itself the cause of the other so-called causes occasionally proposed--overproduction, underconsumption, underemployment, underpayment--in fact, all except "spots on the sun," which can, I think, except for purposes of hilarity be definitely abandoned.

But although we are agreed as to facts, we very much differ as to emphasis. Mr. Beveridge, and indeed all orthodox economists, pa.s.s lightly over the injustice, the immorality and the agony of unemployment. He refers to the "cyclical fluctuation" which gives rise to unemployment as a mere failure of adjustment between demand and supply. "No doubt," he says, "the adjustment takes time and may only[36] be accomplished with a certain amount of friction and loss."

Now this "friction and loss," when expressed in money and wealth, seem to us socialists stupid because avoidable; but when expressed in human life and misery, they seem so intolerable that we are prepared if necessary to shatter to bits the whole system that underlies them, in order to "remould it nearer to the heart's desire." We are relieved then when we discover that by applying wisdom instead of temper to the solution of the problem, it is unnecessary to do any shattering, that we can remould it without violence, and that this is what Socialism proposes to do. Mr. Beveridge disposes of the Socialist solution in a sentence: "To abolish the compet.i.tive stimulus," he says, "is to abolish 'either the possibility of, or the princ.i.p.al factor in material progress.'"[37] But these few words beg the whole question: Need we abolish the compet.i.tive stimulus in the adoption of the Socialist cure? Can we not confine ourselves to eliminating the gambling element in it? Can we not diminish the stakes without abandoning them altogether? Can we not take our a.r.s.enic in tonic instead of in fatal doses? These questions belong to our constructive chapters at the end of the book. I shall take up here only a few other points about unemployment which orthodox economists do not sufficiently emphasize, in order that there may be no doubt as to the magnitude of this evil and as to the duty upon us to eliminate it if we can.

Few things irritate the bourgeois more than to speak of workingmen as "wage slaves." I have seen college professors lose their temper over this word so often that they have served to suggest that in using it we are, as children say, getting "warm." We are very near the Negro we are looking for in the woodpile. Unemployment will help us in our search.

Not only the slave, but the savage, has a great advantage over the workingman, in that the former is never unemployed and the latter need never be so unless he chooses. Unemployment then is the peculiar product of our civilization. It is only under this compet.i.tive system of ours that a strong, hearty, able-bodied man, not only willing, but burning to work, with plenty of work to be done and with plenty of food to be eaten, is refused both. Although there are vacant lots in the heart of our cities and deserted farms within a few miles of them, the unemployed and the women and children dependent on them are to starve because owing to the "failure of adjustment between supply and demand," no one for two years past has been able to make money by employing them. Why this is so will more fully appear in Book II, Chapter III. It is only necessary here to point out the forces that tend to make the wage slave not only more unfortunate, but more dangerous to the community than the African slave.

The slave owner has the same interest in the welfare of his slaves as the cowboy in his cattle. G.o.d knows this is not much, but it is sufficient to keep slaves and cattle in good condition if only for the purpose of getting work out of the one and high prices out of the other. The interest that a slave owner has in the health of his slaves is a continuing one; it lasts during the working years of his slave.

The owner has paid a price or his slave has cost him a certain amount to raise. The interest of the owner, therefore, is to get the most work out of the slave during his working years. For this purpose he lengthens these working years to the utmost possible; and accordingly feeds and clothes his slave sufficiently and does not overwork him.

The interest of the factory owner is just the opposite. He has paid nothing out of his capital for what is called the "free labor" he employs; and because free labor exacts a high wage and short hours, it is to the interest of the factory owner to get the greatest work possible out of his employee, regardless whether his employee is overworked. It is to his interest, not only to use his employee, but to use him up; and to this end he speeds up his machinery to the utmost point in order to force his employees to do the greatest work possible during the hours of employment, and has recourse to pacemakers. He does this with perfect security, because he has an unlimited amount of young labor always at his disposal to replace employees prematurely worn out from overwork and the diseases that come from overwork. The factory owner does not adopt these methods out of hardness of heart, but out of the necessity of the market. If he pays a workingman high wages for short hours, he must get the greatest work out of him if he is to compete successfully with other factory owners in the same line of business. Even the most merciful factory owners have to overwork their employees in order to sell goods at prices fixed by the merciless market. This system results in manifold evils. It creates a cla.s.s not only of unemployed, but of unemployables; men who cannot render efficient service because of disease and of the drunkenness to which overwork tends; for when a workingman feels his strength begin to wane he has recourse to stimulants to last his day out, and once the habit of stimulants is contracted, he loses his appet.i.te for nourishing food and becomes thereby more and more confirmed in the use of intoxicants.

We have here, therefore, a perpetual and necessary production of unemployed and unemployable; the industrial town resembles a gigantic threshing machine which produces its regular quota of unemployed and unemployables as certainly as a threshing machine produces chaff.

This leads to another point to which I wish to attract special attention. Unemployment is generally regarded as a purely temporary evil. Indeed, the New York _Times_ took me to task for speaking of it as a permanent evil.[38] The reason for this widespread error is that permanent unemployment is a thing to which we have grown accustomed.

Charitable societies are familiar with it and know that it exists all the time; but it is only when unemployment adopts gigantic proportions so that the unemployed crowd our parks and streets and even indulge in public demonstrations, that the public becomes aware of it. And it is not only the regular operation of the industrial threshing machine that produces the unemployed and unemployables; it is the character of certain industries and occupations such as seasonal industries--for example, carpentering and casual occupations, such as stevedores and longsh.o.r.emen. Mr. Beveridge gives a very graphic picture of the unemployment on the London docks:[39]

Most of us have heard of the great Dock Strike of 1889, and of the distinguished men who undertook to settle it. Efforts were made then to regulate work on the wharves, and while these efforts did improve the condition of the best of the men, as Mr. Beveridge says, "it is seldom realized how small a proportion of the total field of dock and wharf labor is really covered by the reform."[40]

He attributes the maintenance of evil conditions still prevailing on the docks to the "separation of the interests of wharfingers, shipowners, and contractors," to our old enemy--compet.i.tion.

To appreciate the evil effects of casual or irregular employment, we have again but to quote Mr. Beveridge:

"The knowledge that any man, whatever his experience, however bad his antecedents, might get a job at the docks, attracted to their neighborhood a perpetual stream of blackguards, weaklings and failures from other every occupation. The experience, soon made, that regular attendance was not necessary to secure selection on days when work happened to be plentiful, and the daily alternations of hard exercise and idleness rapidly developed in those who came, if they had it not before, the greatest irregularity of habits, and physical or moral incapacity for continuous exertion. The low physique and half-starved condition of many of the laborers made their work dear at 4d. an hour."[41]

Here he falls in with the evil feature of the compet.i.tive system which has been described as gambling with nothing less for stakes than life, health and happiness: "Finally," concludes Mr. Beveridge, "the door is opened to abuse of patronage; convivial drinking and even direct bribery are not unknown as a means of securing employment."[42]

The form of bribery paid by employees when of the female s.e.x is a still darker side of this dark subject.[43]

Another permanent cause of unemployment is underemployment and underpayment. In many occupations, such as coal mining, underemployment is averaged over a year so as to cause little unemployment but much distress; the high wages which the miners are able to stipulate for through their trade unions are reduced by diminishing the days of work in the year. In other occupations underemployment and underpayment reduce employees to a state of starvation, which of course swells the rank of the unemployables.

Having seen how the pressure of the market forces factory owners to overwork their employees and to dismiss all who are not able to earn the wages they receive; how casual employment creates and keeps alive a cla.s.s of labor such as is described by Mr. Beveridge, and as must perpetually throw employees either upon charity or into the street; and having seen that this is a result of inherent and constant conditions of our industrial system, we are not surprised to find that statistics of unemployment indicate that it exists not only in periods of industrial depression, as is imagined by the New York _Times_ and others, but is, on the contrary, a permanent feature. For example, the September Report of the New York Commissioner of Labor shows that the average percentage of unemployment during the prosperous period between 1902 and 1907, was 16.1 per cent. We shall see later when we endeavor to calculate the amount of our population affected by unemployment, that 16.1 per cent, being derived entirely from trade union reports, does not fully represent the whole, because it is generally admitted that unemployment prevails in much larger proportion in unorganized labor than in organized.[44] The last United States Census sets down the number of factory hands at over 7,000,000.

Taking therefore the official figures as representing the minimum of constant unemployment, 16 per cent of 7,000,000 is 1,120,000, and as every factory hand has on an average four persons dependent upon him, this means a total population of 4,480,000, or roughly, four millions and a half permanently in want in the United States owing to this unemployment which orthodox economists recognize as a necessary result of the compet.i.tive system.

But the public takes no account of the fact that our industrial system regularly reduces a population of 4,500,000 to want. The public only takes account of the extraordinary unemployment which occasions disorder and riot in times of panic and industrial depression. Panics and industrial depressions must not be confounded. We have seen that industrial depressions are the inevitable result of what Mr. Beveridge calls "cyclical fluctuations" and recur with abominable regularity.

Quite independent, however, of these regularly recurring industrial depressions due to the working of the compet.i.tive system, there are financial crises or panics due to similar perturbations in our money market. Although they differ in many respects from industrial depressions, nevertheless they have in common with them the inevitable result of producing unemployment on a large scale. The panic of 1907 began as a purely financial crisis, but promptly became a lengthy period of industrial depression. It is not necessary at this point to discuss the relation between these two. But it is important that mere scarcity of money in the panic of 1907 produced unemployment more suddenly and in larger proportions than any other panics that have preceded it.

Not only private enterprises such as railroads, but public bodies such as munic.i.p.alities, being no longer able to borrow money, had not only to abandon work already voted, but to put a sudden stop to work already undertaken. Laborers were dismissed in batches of five thousand at a time, and every manufacturing and railroad plant was driven by the impossibility of borrowing money to cutting down expenses with a view to increasing the efficiency of the plant. Thus the Pennsylvania Railroad announced that it had so increased the efficiency of its plant that it was able to dismiss 30,000 men during the year; the New York Central during 1907 dismissed ten per cent of the staff upon its main line alone; seventy-six railroads, operating over 172,000 miles of railroad, report an economy of nearly $100,000,000, most of which const.i.tuted an economy in wages,[45] and Senator Guggenheim, in an interview published in the _Wall Street Journal_,[46] said:

"For the first time in many years the employer is getting from his men the 100 per cent in efficiency for which he pays. It is a safe a.s.sertion that prior to the panic the efficiency of labor was no higher than 75 per cent, perhaps not even that."

Special attention is directed to the foregoing because unemployment is ceasing to be a merely accidental and periodic phenomenon and is a.s.suming not only larger, but more permanent proportions. In other words, the 30,000 men dismissed by the Pennsylvania Railroad were not dismissed because of a temporary cessation of traffic. They were dismissed because the Pennsylvania Railroad has succeeded in so raising the efficiency of their system that they can permanently run their lines with 30,000 less employees than they could before.

Let us endeavor to form some idea of the unemployment during the last two years. The only State that regularly publishes official reports on this subject is New York. The State of New York derives its information from such trade unions as report to it; and from these reports it seems that during 1908, the average unemployment has been about one-third.

As has been intimated, an average of one-third of organized labor reported by trade unions, means a very much larger proportion of unorganized labor. It is true that Mr. Beveridge disputes this in one pa.s.sage,[47] but he himself furnishes the evidence of its truth in several others; as for example, where he says that "in practice, therefore, it is found that acute recurrent distress at times of seasonal depression is confined to the unskilled occupations";[48] and again, he points out how the lack of intelligence of unorganized and semi-skilled and unskilled workmen makes it impossible for them to take account of the fluctuations that produce unemployment. "The measure of their failure," he says, "is to be found in those periods of clamant distress which evoke Mansion House Relief Funds."[49]

In Chapter V, again, he points out the chronic distress of unskilled men and that unemployment is largely due to lack of organization. It stands to reason that whereas a factory owner thinks twice before dismissing a skilled workman he will not hesitate to dismiss an unskilled workman whom he can replace at any time.[50]

However much authorities may differ on this in Europe, there can be no question about it in America. It was impossible to read the daily papers in October, 1907, without being satisfied that the first men to suffer were the unorganized and unskilled. Hardly a day pa.s.sed for weeks without papers announcing the discharge of workingmen in batches of thousands at a time. It was only later that factories shut down, and then for the most part, a day or so in the week. Unfortunately, because the unskilled workingman is unorganized, it is impossible to get any information regarding the extent of unemployment in their ranks; but it can be stated without fear of contradiction, that the percentage of unemployment is much larger in the ranks of the unorganized than in those of trade unions.

The one-third, therefore, as shown by the New York Labor reports, is below the mark, I will not undertake to say how much. In endeavoring to make an estimate as to the extent of unemployment throughout the entire Union, we must remember that the percentage of employment in New York is likely to be larger than in purely agricultural States. On the other hand, nowhere is the percentage of unemployment greater than in the States devoted to mining. The difficulty under which we find ourselves, therefore, in giving the exact figure of the extent of unemployment, makes it wise not to increase the one-third reported by trade unions in New York in consequence of the certainty that this proportion was far larger in unorganized labor; and on the other hand, not to decrease it out of the consideration that there were some States in which the percentage would not be as much as in the State of New York. Under these circ.u.mstances it may be a.s.sumed that the percentage reported by the trade unions to the Labor Department fairly represents the average unemployment throughout the whole United States of America. Taking the census figures of over 7,000,000 as that of the workingmen in the country, one-third of 7,000,000 is 2,333,333; add to this the number of persons dependent on these workingmen; four to each, 9,333,333; add this to the first figure and we get a population of 11,666,666 which for two years has been on the edge of starvation, and saved from it only through acc.u.mulated earnings, help from trade unions and charity. As the unskilled workingman can hardly ever save money owing to the low rate of his wages, and as he is not organized and never receives benefits from a union, it may be said that the large majority of these have been living for two years on the charity of their neighbors.

It is probable, too, that the trade union member has been reduced to depending upon charity; for the last report on savings banks shows that $25,000,000 have been withdrawn during the last year, and their presidents, when interviewed, recognized that this diminution was caused by the withdrawal of funds by the unemployed.

It was also due to the withdrawal of funds by the trade unions. In October, 1907, many trade unions had large sums acc.u.mulated which have been applied during the year to the support of the unemployed. The Union of Pressmen had $30,000 last October, all of which has gone to support the unemployed during the year, and this union has suffered comparatively little, only 20 per cent being now idle. This 20 per cent is supported by a.s.sessments on those who are at work.

As regards remedies for unemployment, Mr. Beveridge says that "no cure for industrial fluctuation can be hoped for; the aim must be palliation." And he dwells at great length upon the palliative measures to which Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and to a less extent, France, have recourse; employment bureaus, insurance against unemployment, and farm colonies, to which last he refers only incidentally, pointing out that Hollesley Bay had proved for the most part ineffectual.[51] These palliatives have, however, rendered comparatively small service. In Germany, where they have all been applied, unemployment during 1908 reached the rioting stage, at which it becomes dangerous and commands the attention of our economists, as in England. The palliative, to which Mr. Beveridge only incidentally refers, is, to my mind, calculated not only to diminish the evil immediately, but to serve as an important bridge over which the unemployed and unemployables may pa.s.s into the Promised Land. The farm colony, however, belongs to the constructive chapter at the end of the book.

Another necessary consequence of the compet.i.tive system is a form of unemployment which, because of its importance, deserves consideration by itself--Prost.i.tution.

-- 3. PROSt.i.tUTION

Prost.i.tution is not an easy or agreeable subject to treat; it will be disposed of, therefore, in the fewest words possible. The treatment of it will be summary, not because the subject is unimportant, but because it is abominable. And if it is true that Socialism would put an end to it, this alone, for those who can comprehend the horrors thereof, ought to justify Socialism whatever be the sacrifice necessary to the realization of it. If our present compet.i.tive system is responsible for the evil to both s.e.xes that results from prost.i.tution, then the maintenance of this system is, so far as every one of us by indifference tolerates it, nothing less than crime.

We must begin by making ourselves clear as to what prost.i.tution is.

Mere promiscuity of s.e.xual relation does not const.i.tute prost.i.tution, for many a woman is unfaithful to her husband many times without losing social consideration, provided only she conduct herself with sufficient discretion to avoid scandal.

Nor does intercourse for money const.i.tute prost.i.tution; for then prost.i.tution would include all those who marry for money. The real definition of a prost.i.tute is a woman who has intercourse both promiscuously and for a money reward, promiscuity and gain must be united.

Now it will later be made clear that in a Socialist state because every woman would be furnished an opportunity to work, none would be driven to prost.i.tution.

Prost.i.tution is generally the direct result of the disgrace put upon a woman by loss of virtue. She is turned out of her home and her legitimate employment. She has then but one recourse. It is sometimes due to lack of employment; sometimes to the greater facility prost.i.tution affords for making a livelihood with the least labor. In all these cases the _primum mobile_ is the making of a livelihood. As Socialism would remove this _primum mobile_, would a.s.sure a livelihood to every woman upon the single condition of her performing her allotted work--there would be no motive for prost.i.tution. If she refused to perform her allotted task she would become a pauper--but a prost.i.tute never; for a Socialist state, as will be later explained, would segregate paupers in farm colonies, where they would be compelled to support themselves, and would not leave them to demoralize their neighbors by profligacy and prost.i.tution.

It may be objected that society keeps itself pure by casting out women of loose character, and that an innocent girl should not be called upon to work in a factory side by side with one who will deprave her if she can. An exhaustive answer to this would involve a study of the special conditions of each State, the laws of each State, the mental att.i.tude of the people, their tolerance of immorality or their intolerance of it. It is a problem common to every society. This exhaustive study it is not the province of this book to undertake; the subject must be disposed of, therefore, by the following general considerations:

In the society of the wealthy to-day we are confronted by the same problem as would be presented in a cooperative commonwealth in which prost.i.tution would be rendered impossible by state employment regardless of morality. In other words, wealth does for the wealthy cla.s.s what Socialism would do for the unwealthy; it makes prost.i.tution improbable if not impossible. And the wealthy manage to solve the problem of promiscuity--every wealthy society for itself in its own way.

In one country the woman who outrages morality is socially ostracized; in another she is tolerated; in one country divorces are not only lawful, but fashionable; in others the church forbids divorce but tolerates the complaisant husband. _All these are problems of s.e.x which Socialism does not undertake to solve._ Later on the scientific and ethical aspects of Socialism will, I hope, lead to the conclusion that Socialism will so raise our ethical standards and habits of mind that s.e.xual irregularities will tend to diminish. Prost.i.tution, however, is not a s.e.x, but an economic problem. A woman does not receive money payment except for economic reasons. If the economic pressure is removed she may be licentious, but she will not be a prost.i.tute. Chast.i.ty ought to be a purely moral or social question, not an economic one. The compet.i.tive system makes it economic, and of all the crimes imputable to the compet.i.tive system, this is the greatest, for it directly perverts not only the human body, but the human soul. Of course, unemployment, in degenerating the body, ultimately degenerates the soul also, but the latter generation is more or less remote; the public conscience may be forgiven for not having discovered or taken account of it. But that we should see women daily compelled by hunger to sell soul as well as body and should then shut against them the door of our homes and our hearts, is a crime not only against them, but against ourselves. We are hardening our hearts as well as theirs. We are forcing our minds to that obliquity which sees in Socialism only "p.o.r.nographic literature" and "p.o.r.nographic propaganda" and charges the men who sacrifice their lives to the putting an end to the conditions that produce prost.i.tution with "criminal nonsense" and "grave mental or moral shortcoming."[52]