by John Buchan
“There is one thing to be said, however, which may give us hope. The capitalist of the future, we agreed, will not be the ordinary dull rich man. He will either be a great criminal or a considerable patriot. If he is the first I hope that the law may be strong enough to keep him in bounds, but if he is the latter he may be a great ally of the State. The millionaire who makes money solely to spend it on his pleasures is a cumberer of the ground. I do not care whether his pleasures are gross or refined, he is in any case a cumberer of the ground. But the man who with such a narrow soul will make a great fortune in the future will be rare indeed. He may make a million by rigging the market, but he will do little good at that serious exploitation which is closely akin to statecraft. It is only the latter which concerns us, for it is only if the latter falls into the hands of the fool or the knave that the political danger I dread will appear. Remember, I am talking of exploitation and of new production, not of the mere control of distribution, which is the object of the ordinary Transatlantic trust, for it is in the first kind of activity only that empire and capital come into close relation. The men who will succeed, I hope, will be those who find themselves capable of only spending a portion of their fortune on themselves and who have no desire to ruin their families by hoarding it for them. They will find their hobby not in rare furniture or on the Turf, but in doing, so far as the individual can, the work of the State.”
Carey spoke these last words with a smile, looking towards Lord Appin. The shaft, however, failed of effect, for, as it chanced, Lord Appin’s gaze was occupied with a beautiful cabinet, inlaid with agate and ivory. He looked up, caught Carey’s eye, and looked again at the inestimable treasure. “No, Francis,” he said sadly, “it is very clear that neither you nor I can live at that austere height. I hope you will spare the poor fellows some foible to keep them from the ennui of unvarying altruism.”
“I am not very much concerned with the capitalist,” said the Duchess. “I am much more anxious about labour. Mr Lowenstein, you once spoke at my Plaistow settlement on the subject. I wish you would say again what you told us then.”
Mr Lowenstein was so frail in constitution that even the tonic air of Musuru had failed to give him complete health. His nervous activity made him the prey of headaches, and at the earlier discussions he had sat silent and miserable. For some reason, however, the trip to Entoro had done him good, and to-night he was in the best of spirits.
“What I have to say,” he began, “can be put very shortly. And it has been put in far better words than I can command.”
He opened a slim, well-worn book, that looked a very shabby intruder among the superb bindings around him.
“People say that Ruskin is not read now and that his day is over. I think Mrs Deloraine told me that he had done more than any other man to Corinthianise English prose. That may be true, but he was the first writer under whose charm I fell, and I cannot forget my early love for him. And he happens to say in one passage exactly what I wish to say to-night. It is in ‘The Crown of Wild Olive,’ where he is speaking of the future of England.
‘Are her dominions in the world so narrow,’ he asks, ‘that she can find no place to spin cotton in but Yorkshire? We may organise emigration into an infinite power. We may assemble troops of the more adventurous and ambitious of our youths, we may send them on truest foreign service, founding new seats of authority and centres of thought in uncultivated and unconquered lands; retaining the full affection to our native country no less in our colonists than in our armies, teaching them to maintain allegiance to their fatherland in labour no less than in battle; aiding them with free land in the prosecution of discovery, and the victory over adverse natural powers; establishing seats of every manufacture in the climates and places best fitted for it, and bringing ourselves into due alliance and harmony of skill with the dexterities of every race and the wisdom of every tradition and every tongue.’
These words seem to me to contain the truth about our social problem. England is too old a civilisation, and her natural productive forces have been exploited to the full. We have a vast industrial system which absorbs our energies, and since we have put all our eggs into the industrial basket, our prospects on the insular basis depends on its continuance at a certain high and artificial level. I say ‘artificial,’ for I think English industrialism must be admitted by every one to have long ago gone beyond the point where it is only one of many elements in the national life. Almost everything else has been sacrificed to it, and our peculiar position, historically and geographically, has given us the chance of achieving this abnormal development. But because it is abnormal it is all on a needle-point. We have no background such as other countries possess in their rural prosperity. We are urban and industrial or nothing. The ordinary large works are situated in some densely inhabited and highly rated neighbourhood. Their working expenses are enormous, and their margin of profit variable, since it depends upon so many undetermined conditions. Let there be a shortage in the foreign crop which furnishes their raw material, or a new tariff clapped on their manufactured article by some large consumer, or a new Factory Act, or a fresh rate, and the whole system gets out of gear. The work for the labourer is therefore generally speculative, and there is an equally speculative element on his side. He finds the housing problem insoluble, and he labours generally under conditions which break his health; and he is at the mercy of the organisation of his own trade, and may find himself called to sacrifice his own present comfort for the assumed ultimate advantage of his class.
“These and a dozen other elements of uncertainty, which spring from the extreme artificiality of our industrial system, tend to create the unemployed problem. Even the skilled workman finds himself frequently out of work, while the vast class of the unskilled — the unfortunates who are morally, mentally, or physically handicapped, or who through misfortune or lack of energy have remained at the foot of the ladder of labour — feel the insecurity more deeply. To my mind there is only one diagnosis of the evil. Industrialism has eaten us up, and, like all monopolies, has become a morbid growth, taking our life’s blood and giving us little back. We are too preoccupied with it, and it is too preoccupied with itself. It is — how shall I say? — like a quantity of hot charcoal which, if spread through all the rooms of the house would have pleasantly warmed them, but if collected in one chamber will asphyxiate the inmates. And the result is the starving poor in our streets, and in every great city some quarter which is a sink of misery and crime.
“There are, of course, a hundred proposals. Some maintain that the State should turn itself into a kind of Universal Employer, and use the derelict classes on public works devised for no other purpose than their relief. I do not think such a course would do much good. The State, by its large outlay on unproductive and unnecessary works, would be lessening the wealth of the country, and thereby lowering industrial well-being and adding indirectly to that evil of unemployment which it purported to cure. Some again are prepared to nationalise means of production, and make all industry a State concern. No doubt that course would effect many startling changes, but it would overturn the foundations of our society, the good with the evil; and I do not think that the English people will be inclined to burn their house down in order to cure the damp in the cellar. Some people propose, vaguely but benevolently, a return to the land. The great proprietors would disappear, and their estates would be converted into a multitude of small holdings, on which the unskilled, who had failed to maintain themselves at simple trades, would be set down to the most difficult of all professions. Of all schemes this seems to me the most crazy. If you make the holdings small enough to admit of a great number of families being settled on the land, you will make it impossible for these families to make a living. It is the simplest calculation. In the present state of English agriculture we know exactly how much land and how much capital are required before there can be sufficient return to make an income. If, on the other hand, you create only a small number of largish farms, you do n
ot touch the unemployed problem.
“There are many other suggestions which I need not repeat. But there is one feature common to them all. They all propose to settle the question on the basis of England, and England alone. Now I maintain that to attempt this is simply to reshuffle the cards without an atom of positive gain. The disease we are suffering from is congestion, a poverty of means to ends, a lack of breathing - space and opportunity. Millions are being morally starved because they have no hope in their lives, and their labour is without honour or ideals; and, may be, physically starved because they are not wanted in the present industrial market. What we have to realise is that these islands of ours are over-exploited. You may arrange your beans in different ways, but you will never make more than five; and if you want a square meal you must get more beans.
“Therefore I say with all the earnestness I possess, that we can never settle the labour question with its kindred problem of unemployment on an English basis. What would we think of a landowner whose fields were grossly overstocked and his animals starved, although he had a rich farm at the other side of the county which was wholly ungrazed. We must take into account all our assets and face the difficulties in a spirit of sober reason. Let us find out what margin of workmen are crowded out of regular employment, let us classify carefully, for each problem must be dealt with on its merits, and there is no short cut to a solution. But let us keep in mind all the data, for there is no hope for us if we refuse to admit more than one-third into our inquiry. Public works for the unemployed may be unnecessary and wasteful in England, but elsewhere in the Empire they may be both necessary and economical ‘Back to the land’ may be a foolish cry in a country where the soil refuses to support its owners, but the same thing is not true of the whole globe. There are countries which need above all things men, that commodity of which we have enough and to spare.
They will take our raw human material and shape it for us. And they will take our industries and plant them in places where the men employed can lead a free life. The day of the great factory with its operatives living in the acres of squalid houses around it is going, I believe, even in England. It is recognised that industries under such conditions sin alike against decency, patriotism, and true economy. Even in England to-day you have your factories in the country and your model industrial villages. What is done on a small scale within our island can be done on a great scale within the Empire. It is for wiser men than me to settle the details, but I am convinced that Buskin has found in the matter a truth which is hidden from Royal Commissions.”
Mr Lowenstein spoke nervously and rapidly, and when he ceased he lay back in his chair as if much fatigued and closed his eyes. Lady Warcliff, who in spite of her energy and independence had always some prophet at whose feet she sat in her leisure, watched him with a solicitous face, and, since he showed no signs of continuing, took up his parable.
“As a woman interested in philanthropy,” she began, “I heartily wish the thing had never been heard of We are smothered with it nowadays. We want less charity, and more justice and intelligence. Some one has divided mankind into soft-hearted cruel people and hardhearted kind people. The first have had their day, and a pretty mess they have made of it. They have filled our hospitals and asylums, and given us our East Ends, and our unemployed demonstrations. Comfortable people like a little easy charity as the sauce to their enjoyment. They are too cowardly and supine to face the truth, so they hang over it the cloak of their egregious generosity. We shall never get one step farther till we recognise that the destitute must be divided sharply into two classes — those who may be saved and those who, being past hope, should cease to exist.”
“Upon my word, Margaret, our sex comes very badly out of these discussions,” the Duchess’s voice had a startled note in it. “On board the yacht I heard Caroline airily advocating persecution, and now you want to cure our disorders by the euthanasia of social cripples. I am horrified that barbarism should find its only advocates among women.”
“I was afraid I should shock you,” said Lady Warcliff sweetly. “And yet — will you show me any other remedy? There are classes of the poor in every town who in all seriousness are beyond hope. It may be physical, or moral, or mental, but the weakness is there and cannot be overcome. We shut up criminals and lunatics, and yet we allow these people, who are as certainly a leprous spot in our society, to go on marrying and perpetuating their worthless stock and hampering the activity of the State. Sharp surgery is the only cure. I want to see these hordes of thriftless, degenerate, scrofulous pariahs treated as what they are, irredeemable outcasts from society, and compelled by the State to keep their noxious influence away from the saner parts. This, however, is beside the question. It is the people who are worth saving that I want to talk about.
“Like everybody who has been much among the poor, I have had many theories as to the cause and the cure of the evils I saw before me. But after I had tried many and found them wanting, I came round to the kind of creed which Mr Lowenstein has been sketching. It is this alone which makes me call myself an Imperialist. The common cant of empire is more obnoxious to me, I think, than any other cant. I have no liking for rhetoric or adventure, and most of my best friends belong to the school which is untouched by the glamour of foreign dominion. I want, like them, to cure our own evils before we proselytise up and down the earth, but it is just because of that desire that I am an Imperialist.
“Take the very poor — men and women who are capable of work and could be raised under decent conditions to a wholesome level of life. If you keep such people on charity you ruin their self-respect. Besides, there is not enough charity to go round. But what they want in their lives is not so much the bare means of existence as some kind of hope. They must have a horizon before them, not straight grey walls between which they will be shepherded till they die. They want to be given opportunity, where on their own feet they can fight with fair confidence, first for a living and then for the amenities of life. Now it is my conviction that as things stand to-day in England it is impossible to give them opportunity. We may slightly improve their condition, and save a few here and there from starvation, but it is all an attempt to cure an earthquake with a pill. If we are true reformers we must go to the root of the matter and change the conditions which make destitution possible.
“This is the creed of socialism, and so far we all agree with it. Our common position is, that we must create opportunity for all, not merely rescue hard cases. Where we part company is the method of this reform. One way is to lower the rich and raise the poor, until the whole State forms one vast lower middle-class in respect of income. By this means we should not increase the aggregate of opportunity, but we should make a fairer distribution. My objection to it — or rather the chief of my many objections — is, that it involves so complete a revolution not only in the material aspects of our society but in its whole thought and tradition, that it will be an uncommonly hard thing to achieve. Besides, I see little attraction in a society where, as Bagehot said, people would be forbidden to go barefoot, and everybody would have one boot apiece. I prefer the alternative, which is more logical, and to my mind infinitely more attractive, than a levelled-down middle-class State. My proposal is to add to the aggregate of opportunity. I want to follow the great law of supply and demand, and send men and women away from the place where they are not wanted to places where they will be welcomed.
“At the same time I do not call my scheme emigration. People are free to emigrate as they choose to any part of the world, and if this were the unfailing cure for poverty the poor would long ago have found it out for themselves. I advocate State-organised emigration within the Empire, because it is only under these conditions that you can have it scientifically organised and supervised. Emigration is the least easy art in the world. It needs careful selection, long preparation of land and people for each other, and it wants at the back of it all the authority of the State. I have seen many experiments made by private individuals and phil
anthropic agencies which have been successful, but for our problem the solution must be on a great scale, otherwise we shall not have faced the difficulties fairly. The State must be the great emigrator. It alone has the power to collect full information and decide whether this or that scheme is justifiable. It can make arrangements with the Colonies, and it can reduce the cost of transport to a minimum. An imperial executive, such as we talked of the other evening, will be equal to the task, for being representative of the whole empire it will be spared the long negotiations with Colonial Governments which we have to put up with at present. Besides, in its permanent Bureau of Intelligence it will have the machinery for framing its schemes on the surest and most scientific grounds.
“If you send the right man to the right place in the right way you will manufacture citizens out of material which at present is sinking into the slough of despair. You will give our empty lands population and reduce the congestion of our English slums. And you will bring hope, and a reasonable hope, into a kind of life which is starved for the lack of it. I do not say that the result can be achieved at once. But you will have opened up a path, and soon it will be well trodden. We Imperialists look forward to our people becoming more mobile, and seeking a home wherever life can be lived freely and sanely, instead of choking within the limits which were sufficient for the fathers but are too narrow for the sons. We agreed the other evening that our industries must move as occasion demands, and labour will naturally follow them. These are inevitable but unconscious processes due to the compulsion of facts. Meanwhile we can begin by a conscious attempt to redeem the tragedy of our civilisation not by any violent cataclysm but by using those means which are ready at hand. In Canning’s phrase, we must call in the new world to redress the balance of the old.”
